A Toronto-based non-profit has facilitated the return of a Pierre-Auguste Renoir artwork allegedly looted by the Nazis to the Musée d'Orsay, marking the end of a 90-year journey as dramatic as the painting itself.
The Painting's Journey
Le Jugement de Pâris, a 1908 sanguine sketch depicting the classic myth of the Judgment of Paris, was loaned to the Parisian museum by the EJB Steinberg Arts Foundation, a Canadian non-profit that acquired the artwork in 2023. The sketch, executed in browns, reds, and terracotta, shows three nude goddesses—Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite—with Paris kneeling to the left, choosing Aphrodite by offering a golden apple.
Complicated History
"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. The artwork was originally owned by Ambroise Vollard, a prominent European picture dealer who invested in young artists like Picasso and Renoir. Vollard began his art career in 1890, selling pieces from his seventh-floor apartment.
Vollard owned the sketch until his sudden death in a suspicious 1939 car crash. By then, he possessed over 6,000 invaluable pieces displayed in his Paris townhome and gallery. After his death, his brother Lucien became executor of his will and enlisted Vollard's apprentice, Martin Fabiani, as an expert appraiser.
Lucien quickly sold over 600 pieces from the family inheritance to Fabiani without legal authorization. Two weeks before Germany's arrival in France, Fabiani fled to Spain with the collection in his car. He then moved to Portugal, where he obtained a British origin certificate for the art, claiming it was collected in France before German occupation. Fabiani packed hundreds of artworks into four crates valued at roughly $10,000, which were loaded onto the American Excalibur cargo ship traveling from Lisbon to New York in 1940.
Return to Musée d'Orsay
The drawing is now part of a new exhibition displaying Renoir's lost drawings from the turn of the 20th century. The EJB Steinberg Arts Foundation's return of the artwork highlights ongoing efforts to repatriate looted art and address historical injustices.
