Henry P. Newman (Q1607123)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is selling a Monet, following settlement of a World War II claim on the painting. Sotheby's is to auction "Le Repos Dans Le Jardin Argenteuil" in New York on May 8, with an estimate of $3.5 million to $4.5 million.Five years ago, a claim for the Monet was initiated by French resident Henry Newman Henry Newman , who said that it had been deposited in a Berlin bank vault by his family in the early 1940s and was stolen during the Soviet occupation in 1945. A few years later the Monet surfaced in New York where, in 1952, the A & R Ball Gallery sold it in good faith to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman Charles Wrightsman . In 1994 Mrs. Wrightsman presented the painting to the Metropolitan. (English)

Settlement Reached on Monet’s Garden at Argenteuil

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http://web.archive.org/web/20200813043649/https://www.metmuseum.org/press/news/2001/argenteuil-settlement

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(New York, August 22, 2001) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Mr. Henry H. Newman announced today that they have reached a settlement in a recent dispute over a painting in the Museum’s collection, The Garden of Monet’s House in Argenteuil (1874), by Claude Monet. In 1997 Mr. Newman, who resides in France, initiated a claim for the painting. The Painting had been purchased in Berlin by Mr. Newman’s grandfather, Henry Percy Newman, of Hamburg, Germany, in 1916 and placed in a bank vault in Berlin by Mr. Newman’s grandmother, in 1940, for safekeeping. During World War II, Carl Henry Newman (the claimant’s father), who was then serving in the German army, inherited the work. Mr. Newman claimed that the painting was stolen from then bank vault during the Soviet occupation of Berlin in 1945. Several issues remained in dispute between the parties, including how and when the painting was removed from the vault. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman purchased the painting in good faith from A. & R. Ball Gallery in New York in 1952, and Mrs. Wrightsman gave the painting to the Museum in 1994. In 1997 Mr. Newman initiated the claim after he located a long lost family photograph that enabled him to identify the painting as the one owned by his family. (English)