Before Thieves Stole A Now-Missing Renoir Painting, Family Says Nazis Had Already Done So—And It Belongs to Them.

The mystery has just deepened around who rightfully owns the two still-missing paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, stolen on Tuesday from a museum in southern France, along with two other artworks by the Impressionist, which were ultimately abandoned in the museum garden.

According to Le Monde, the descendants of the Paris-based, Jewish dealer Jadwiga (also called Hedwig) Zak, who died in Auschwitz, had previously made a formal request for the restitution of one of the two missing Renoir paintings, Jeune femme au puits (1886).

The Canada-based Mondex Corporation, which advocates for people seeking to recover artworks that were often lost in the Holocaust, also confirmed to ARTnews that they have been working with Zak’s heirs to that end. Mondex founder James Palmer said over the phone that about a year ago, his team sent a petition to the French government arguing for the painting’s return to the Zak family, and were waiting to learn whether their request was approved when thieves got to the Renoir painting first.

“We are doing our best to cooperate with local authorities to expedite the recovery and ultimate restitution of this important painting,” said Palmer. Palmer explained Mondex had presented “a great deal of compelling evidence” to back their restitution request, and still felt confident French officials would recognize the family was the rightful owner of the artwork—even if the painting itself may never be recovered.

“At the time of the forced sale of that painting, the Aryanization of Jadwiga’s gallery had already commenced, and that was an important fact,” Palmer added.

Jadwiga Zak founded Galerie Zak in 1928 in Paris, where she showed modern European and South American art. She also married the Russian-Polish painter Eugeniusz (or Eugène) Zak. In 1941, her gallery and home were seized by French and Nazi officials, and in 1944, she and her son both perished in Auschwitz.

Zak’s heirs and the Mondex team hope the Renoir, a painted sketch depicting a woman drawing water from a well, will be recovered with minimal damage. If not, an alternative agreement involving payment from the artworks’ insurers could be one option, Palmer explained. “We have faith in the French authorities being able to resolve this matter,” he said, noting that the immediately recognizable Renoir work would be extremely hard for anyone to sell.

Paul Perrin, chief curator and director of conservation and collections at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, corroborated some of the Zak family’s claim. He told Le Monde that during World War II, Jeune femme au puits was “seized by the German organization Otto: a black-market purchasing office, and then it ended up in Bavaria.” Perrin recently curated a traveling Renoir exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, the institution that also lent on a long-term basis all four of the paintings that were stolen from the Renoir Museum in southern France.

“We share in [the Rodin Museum’s] grief and distress. We stand by their side,” Perrin said. He added that any restoration work would be “minimal” for the two recovered paintings that were left behind by the thieves, aside from their frames, one of which initially appeared to have sustained some damage. They are: Portrait of Madame Pichon (1895) and Coco Lisant (1905).

Additionally, ARTnews was able to confirm that both of the stolen and still-missing Renoirs were classified as Biens Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR) [National Museums Recovery Property], or are informally known as “orphan” artworks, meaning their rightful owners are unknown. This can also support the Zak family’s claim and potentially speed up the restitution process. Lastly, the recovered painting Coco Lisant also has the MNR label.

Allied forces returned thousands of artworks to France from Germany after the war, based on records showing the objects had recently come from there. As a result, most, but not all, MNR-labeled objects were pillaged by Nazi’s during their occupation of France. Thus, the second stolen Renoir painting for which police are actively searching, titled Madame Colonna Romano (1913), has the MNR label, but it is not believed to have been Nazi loot. Records show it was sold without any apparent signs of duress by dealer Raphaël Gérard to the Abels gallery, which had been active in France during the war, and then it was acquired by an individual in Germany.