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Renoir's return: How a Canadian non-profit emancipated looted artwork
A Toronto foundation has helped return a Renoir artwork allegedly looted by the Nazis to the Musée d’Orsay, after a 90-year journey as dramatic as the painting itself.
Le Jugement de Pâris, a circa 1915 sanguine sketch of a classic cultural myth, was loaned to the Parisian museum by Canadian non-profit EJB Steinberg Arts Foundation, which bought the artwork in 2023.
“From what I understand, this painting has a complicated history, but one that is all too common for many great European works of art,” said foundation director Elen Steinberg in an email.
It is part of a new exhibition displaying Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s lost drawings from the turn of the 20th century
The drawing depicts three nude women standing in various positions as a fourth figure kneels to the left of the page. The sketch uses browns, reds and terracotta to form their silhouettes without using harsh lines or intense colours.
The person kneeling to the left represents Paris, son to the King of Troy. The women depict three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, and the ultimate choice Paris must make for their love . As the story goes, Paris chooses Aphrodite by giving her a golden apple, visible in Renoir’s later depictions.
Its onetime owner, Ambroise Vollard, was an ambitious European picture dealer, often investing in young, upcoming artists such as Picasso and Renoir. Vollard began in the arts in 1890, selling pieces out of his seventh-floor apartment.
Le Jugement de Pâris was owned by Vollard until his sudden death in a “suspicious” 1939 car crash. By that point, it is estimated he owned more than 6,000 invaluable pieces that lined the halls of his Paris townhome and gallery.
Following his death, Vollard’s brother Lucien became the executor to his will. Lucien incited his brother’s apprentice, Martin Fabiani, as an expert appraiser for the collection.
Vollard’s collection was to be divided between his family and his partner , Madeleine de Galéa. His brother quickly sold over 600 pieces from the family inheritance to Fabiani. But Lucien Vollard did not have legal authorization to sell this property.
Two weeks prior to Germany’s arrival in France, Fabiani fled to Spain with the collection in his car. He proceeded to Portugal, where he obtained a British origin certificate for Vollard’s property under the context that the art was collected in France before German occupation.
Fabiani managed hundreds of art pieces into four crates valued at roughly $10,000. The crates were loaded onto the American Excalibur cargo ship travelling from Lisbon to New York in 1940.
Two days after the ship left port , the British Ministry of Economic Warfare was warned that Fabiani secured a false certificate and seized the crates to the port of Bermuda.
Bermuda’s attorney general declared the artworks as a “prize of war” and transported them to a better climate for preservation. In November 1940, the Vollard collection travelled to Ottawa to be stored at the National Gallery (the present site of the Canadian Museum of Nature).
Martin Fabiani was accused by the media of Nazi connections. His personal memoirs suggest he travelled back to France in 1940 to aid Jewish artists in maintaining their life and work. However, military records listed him in connection with The Schenker Transport Company, a corporation used to move Nazi-stolen art.
“( Le Jugement de Pâris ) ended up in the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War. After the war it was taken by the French government and exhibited in many museums throughout France,” Steinberg said, including the Musée d’Orsay.
The French government adopted the “Removal of cultural asset from public collections” law in July 2023 declaring that cultural property, like Le Jugement de Pâris , must be returned to its owners “for the purpose of restitution.”
“They weren’t interested in keeping it, however, as they put it into auction,” Steinberg said. “Which is where (the foundation) happened to see it and acquire it privately after the auction.”
Le Jugement de Pâris is back on display at the Musée d’Orsay as part of the lost Renoirs exhibition because “important works like this belong in the public eye,” she said.
“Through its efforts, the foundation not only safeguards works of historical importance but also plays an active role in education, promoting cultural dialogue, scholarship, and community engagement across the arts sector,” Steinberg said.
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