Painting by Camille Pissarro to remain in Bremen

Kunsthalle Bremen has arrived at a just and fair solution in the spirit of the Washington Principles with the heir to the painting Resting, Peasant Girl Lying on the Grass (1882) by Camille Pissarro. Thanks to years of research, international cooperation among provenance researchers, a mutual willingness to negotiate and the financial support of major foundations, the painting can now remain at Kunsthalle Bremen.

The provenance of Resting, Peasant Girl Lying on the Grass by Camille Pissarro has been under investigation at Kunsthalle since 2010. In 2016, colleagues in the Netherlands found a previously missing piece of evidence in an archive in The Hague that clarified the ownership situation during the German occupation of the Netherlands in the Nazi era. A restitution form listed the name of the former owner, Jaap van den Bergh (1908 – 1958), director of the textile company Bergoss in Oss.

After the Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, the Van den Bergh family was subjected to persecution due to their Jewish background. Jaap van den Bergh survived the occupation in hiding with his wife. His two daughters, Rosemarie Ida (1936 – 1944) and Frieda Marianne (1939 – 1944) were placed in a children’s home but were betrayed, deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

In order to finance his life in hiding, Van den Bergh was forced to sell paintings and jewellery, including Resting, Peasant Girl Lying on the Grass by Pissarro, which he sold to freight forwarder Dirk Lijnzaad in 1942 for 23,000 guilders. Soon afterwards, Lijnzaad sold the painting for an unknown amount to the German collector Hugo Oelze, who was based in Amsterdam. When Oelze died in 1967, he bequeathed the painting to the Kunsthalle in his hometown of Bremen.

Van den Bergh attempted to recover the painting after the war. Although he was informed that it was in the possession of Hugo Oelze in Amsterdam, restitution was not possible at the time under German law, since the painting had never been taken to Germany. Kunsthalle Bremen contacted Van den Bergh’s heir in 2016, ultimately leading to an amicable settlement – nearly 80 years after the end of the war.

The Van den Bergh family emigrated to the United States in 1946. The trauma of persecution remains tangible to this day, even for later generations. For this reason, it is very important to the heir for the tragic story of her family to be told – as a representative example of so many Jewish lives during that period that have been lost to history. This is the aim of the book The Girl in the Grass. The Tragic Fate of the Van den Bergh Family and the Search for a Painting, edited by Dutch researchers Eelke Muller and Annelies Kool, with contributions by Dorothee Hansen, Brigitte Reuter and Rudi Ekkart.

From November 2024 to March 2025 the painting was displayed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, where its story was shared with a broad audience – another aspect that was of particular importance to the heir. At Kunsthalle Bremen the painting will be on display from April 2025, accompanied by a text detailing the fate of the Van den Bergh family.

A key concern for the heir was to uncover the historical facts and honour the memory of her two murdered sisters. A financial settlement was also part of the agreement. This payment would not have been possible for the privately funded art association in Bremen without the generous support of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation and the estate of Fritz Müller-Arnecke.

In connection with International Provenance Research Day, a talk will take place at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, 8 April entitled: Der lange Schatten der NS-Zeit – Die Geschichte des Gemäldes “Im Gras liegendes Mädchen” von Camille Pissarro [The long shadow of the Nazi era – The history of the painting “Girl in the Grass” by Camille Pissarro], with Dr. Dorothee Hansen (Deputy Director of the Kunsthalle) and Dr. Brigitte Reuter (provenance researcher).

Since 2010, provenance research into the painting has been supported through several time-limited projects funded by the

German Lost Art Foundation in Magdeburg and its predecessor, the Arbeitsstelle für Provenienzforschung (Bureau for Provenance Research). 

To the projects at Kunsthalle Bremen