These pages present the National Gallery of Canada's continuing research on the provenance (history of ownership) of works in its collection during the period from 1933 to 1945, that is, from the rise to power of the Nazi Party to its defeat. We publish this information in accordance with the Guidelines Governing the Unlawful Appropriation of Objects during the Nazi Era, adopted by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) in June 1998 and Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization (CAMDO) in 1998 and 1999.

Provenance [i.e. the history of previous ownership of a work of art] research has always been and continues to be a central and often laborious activity of our staff, as it is at most art museums. It serves many purposes, sometimes helping to substantiate an attribution and at all times aiding curators, educators and scholars to understand the history of collecting and taste. The Gallery has published fully illustrated information on the permanent collection in catalogues, its annual reports and other publications for many years, e.g European and American Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, Volume 1 1300-1800, published in 1987. The Web provides another powerful method of distribution.

Reconstruction of a complete history of ownership for a given work can be difficult and sometimes impossible. Many records of ownership have been lost as a result of natural disasters, man-made disasters such as war, or neglect. Information is sometimes withheld by dealers and auction houses at the request of previous owners, who wish to maintain their anonymity. Much archival information remains undiscovered or difficult to access. Provenance information we receive or find needs to be treated cautiously, since owners, dealers, curators and scholars have been known to associate documentary evidence with the wrong object.

There are at the Gallery, as in just about every other museum in the world, a great many works of art whose ownership history is not fully known. Dealers and auction houses have often been disinclined to specify the origins of their stock, and this long before the Nazi period - a period for which, additionally, even less information has survived. I would like to emphasize that the list is not a list of "suspect" pictures. Rather the inclusion of a painting on this list indicates only that more information is required to complete our knowledge of its ownership during the Nazi era.

The works published in this section of our Web site have gaps in, or no provenance for, the period from 1933 to 1945. Such gaps in provenance, in and of themselves, are by no means proof that these works were looted during the Holocaust or World War II. The Gallery publishes this list to open our inquiry further, and we welcome any information on the provenance of works in our collection that users of this site can provide. This Web site will be augmented in the future. We have begun with those of our paintings and sculptures that have incomplete or not fully documented provenances for the period from 1933 to 1945. Works from other collections will be added periodically.

To date, the Gallery has not received any claim from a victim of Nazi spoliation, nor been asked to look for a missing work by a victim or an heir. On the other hand, we realize how difficult this can be, especially one or two generations removed, and so we are conscious of our own ethical obligations in this regard and take them very seriously.

To this end we are releasing a list of all the European and American paintings and sculptures in our collection for which full information about ownership during the Nazi era is still incomplete after our research.

Pierre Théberge, C.Q.
Director

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