73.9 x 67.6 cm (29 1/8 x 26 5/8 in.)
Oil on panel

Inscriptions: Lower right: E. vander Neer f.

Classification: Paintings
Type, sub-type: Portrait - Double

On view in the: Robert and Ruth Remis Gallery (European Art 1600–1800)

An affluent couple is seated comfortably in their handsome room, with embossed leather covering the wall and a Persian carpet on the table. Dutch artists often depicted paintings within paintings to comment on their subjects, and here the image of Venus over the mantel may allude to the couple's marital harmony. When van der Neer's painting entered the Museum's collection in 1941, Venus had been over-painted with a sedate landscape, reflecting the more straitlaced taste of a later age.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Seth K. Sweetser Fund, 1941
Accession number: 41.935

Provenance/Ownership History: Please note: The history of ownership is not definitive or comprehensive, as it is under constant review and revision by MFA curators and researchers.

February 17, 1802, anonymous ("M. W...") sale, Rue de Beloy, Paris, possibly lot 27 [see note 1]. 1841, Charles-August-Louis Joseph (b. 1811 - d. 1865), Duc de Morny; April 27, 1841, Morny sale, G. Benou, Paris, lot 17, unsold; November 25, 1842, Morny sale, Paillet, Paris, lot 14, unsold; February 25-26, 1845, Morny sale, Hôtel des Ventes, Paris, lot 63 [see note 2]. Désiré van den Schrieck (b. 1786 - d. 1857), Louvain; April 8-10, 1861, posthumous Schrieck sale, at his gallery, Louvain, lot 68, to Ferdinand Laneuville (d. 1866), Paris. About 1935/1936, Robert Lebel (b. 1901 - d. 1986), Paris [see note 3]; about 1935/1936, sold by Lebel to Walter Westfeld (b. 1889 - d. after 1942), Elberfeld and Düsseldorf, Germany [see note 4]. 1941, E. and A. Silberman Galleries, New York [see note 5]; 1941, sold by Silberman to the MFA for $7500. (Accession Date: December 11, 1941)

NOTES:
[1] Described as a work on panel by Eglon van der Neer, 27 by 25 inches, depicting a Dutch couple whose black dress indicates they are a burgomaster and his wife, sitting in an interior with a fireplace and a table with fruit on it.

[2] The paintings included in the February 1845 sale were sold on Morny's behalf under the name of Jean-Jacques Meffre, who served as his art advisor and painting conservator. See Robin Emlein, "La Collection du duc de Morny, Étude du goût pour les écoles du Nord en France au XIXe siècle," Master's thesis, École du Louvre, 2007, vol. 1, pp. 41-44 and vol. 2, pp. 121-122 (cat. B100).

[3] The art dealer Robert Lebel visited the MFA on October 8, 1943 and told curator W. G. Constable that he had sold this painting to Walter Westfeld around 1937; Constable recorded this interview in a note, which he placed in the curatorial file. According to a letter from Walter Westfeld's brother to the MFA (February 6, 1944), Lebel had written to him in the fall of 1943 as well, stating that around 1935/1936 he had sold the painting to Westfeld. An old photograph of the painting exists in Lebel's photographic archive; it is annotated on the back: "Eglon van der Neer."

[4] In 1920 Walter Westfeld opened a gallery that bore his name in Elberfeld (present-day Wuppertal). However, under the Nazi regime he was forced to discontinue his business because he was Jewish; the Galerie Walter Westfeld officially closed on May 27, 1936. When Robert Lebel contacted Westfeld's brother in 1943 (see above, n. 2), he wrote that Walter Westfeld had had this painting at the Galerie Kleucker. A painting described as a Company Scene by Eglon van der Neer, which may be the present painting, was exhibited at the Galerie August Kleucker, Düsseldorf, in mid-May, 1936. Lebel also wrote that Westfeld had it "at a time, in Amsterdam." He did not specify precisely when or where.

[5] A photograph of the painting, supplied to the MFA by Silberman, bears W. R. Valentiner's authentication on the reverse, dated May 15, 1941. The painting was first offered to the MFA on June 3, 1941. A subsequent letter from dealer Abris Silberman to W. G. Constable of the MFA (June 3, 1942) states that "the painting was brought to this country by a refugee some time ago" but had never been in a U.S. collection. Attempts to determine when and how Silberman acquired the work have not been successful.


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The MFA continues to seek information on Walter Westfeld and the provenance of the Portrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior. In particular, the MFA is investigating when and how the painting may have left Walter Westfeld's possession and made its way to the United States. Several months after the closure of Westfeld's gallery on May 27, 1936, his associate August Kleucker was put in charge of liquidating the gallery stock through the Galerie Kleucker in Düsseldorf. It is not known whether this painting had formed part of Westfeld's gallery stock or whether he owned it privately, and it is not known if it was part of the 1936 liquidation. In the fall of 1937, Westfeld was forced to turn over to the Gestapo a list of all the works of art still in his possession; the Van der Neer does not appear on this list. Whether it was no longer in Westfeld's possession at this time, or had been deliberately left off the list, is uncertain.

In November 1938 Westfeld was arrested for foreign exchange violations. He was subsequently found guilty of having -- after the closure of his gallery -- illegally shipped works of art and other assets abroad, to Paris and Amsterdam, and of continuing to sell his own works of art through Kleucker. Whether the Van der Neer left his possession in one of these ways is not known. According to correspondence from a family member to the MFA (November 11, 2004), Westfeld had paintings and other valuables at the Rotterdamse Wisselbank in Amsterdam as late as 1939; again, it is not known if the Van der Neer could have been among these. The valuables were apparently taken unlawfully and sold during World War II, and remain untraced.

In 1939 Nazi authorities seized Westfeld's remaining art assets in Germany and auctioned them through Lempertz, Cologne, on December 12-13, 1939. The Van der Neer painting was not included in this sale.

After Westfeld's trial in Nazi Germany, he served a prison sentence at Lüttringhausen. In 1942 he was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and, in 1943, to Auschwitz. He was declared deceased at the end of World War II.

Detailed information about Walter Westfeld's arrest and trial has been published by Herbert Schmidt, Der Elendsweg der Düsseldorfer Juden: Chronologie des Schreckens, 1933-1945 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2005), pp. 273-278. For a case study of the provenance of this painting, see Victoria S. Reed, "Walter Westfeld (1889-1943?), Art Dealer in Nazi Germany," in Vitalizing Memory: International Perspectives in Provenance Research (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 2005). Also see Monika Tatzkow, in Verlorene Bilder,Verlorene Leben: Jüdische Sammler und was aus ihren Kunstwerken wurde (Munich, 2009), pp. 87-97.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, please see http://www.mfa.org/research/

This object is included in the following Selected Tour(s):

• All European Paintings
• Northern European Paintings
• List of Provenence Research Works
• Art with a Past