War loss is returned to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

The paint­ing en­ti­tled An Old Man Ca­ress­es a Kitchen Maid in a Sta­ble (1649?) is at­tribut­ed to Flem­ish genre and land­scape painter David Te­niers the Younger and his stu­dio and de­picts a pop­u­lar sub­ject of 17th cen­tu­ry Dutch genre paint­ing.

As In­spec­tor Gen­er­al of the Königlich Säch­sis­che Samm­lun­gen (Sax­on Roy­al Col­lec­tions), Baron Ray­mond Le Plat ac­quired the work in 1727 for the col­lec­tion of paint­ings be­long­ing to Au­gus­tus the Strong. This is in­di­cat­ed in the old­est gallery in­ven­to­ry dat­ing back to 1722-1728. Ac­cord­ing to the sur­viv­ing files, the paint­ing was loaned to the Min­istry of the In­te­ri­or in Dres­den in 1931, and there is ev­i­dence it was still there in 1945. Af­ter that, it is thought to have gone miss­ing and was list­ed as a war loss in the Lost Art Database of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion. The work has ap­peared sev­er­al times on the in­ter­na­tion­al art mar­ket since 1977, but ef­forts to re­claim it for the gallery failed re­peat­ed­ly.

In 2014, an art deal­er from Naples of­fered to sell the paint­ing to the SKD. On sus­pi­cion of re­ceiv­ing stolen goods – the de­fen­dant is said to have at least tac­it­ly ac­cept­ed the fact that the work was a war loss which had pre­vi­ous­ly be­longed to a pub­lic art col­lec­tion – it was seized by the Cara­binieri af­ter the SKD in­formed the Sax­on State Crim­i­nal Of­fice of Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion. The case was then hand­ed over to the pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor’s of­fice in Naples.

With the in­volve­ment of the Sax­on State Min­istry of Jus­tice and for Democ­ra­cy, Eu­ro­pean Af­fairs and Equal­i­ty in close con­sul­ta­tion with the Staatliche Kun­st­samm­lun­gen Dres­den, and thanks to the sup­port of the Cara­binieri Com­mand for the Pro­tec­tion of Cul­tur­al Her­itage, the paint­ing was suc­cess­ful­ly re­turned to Dres­den.

Due to its state of con­ser­va­tion, the genre paint­ing can ini­tial­ly on­ly be pre­sent­ed in the Gemälde­ga­lerie Alte Meis­ter (Old Mas­ters Pic­ture Gallery) for a short pe­ri­od of time. Restora­tion work is planned.