Dutch masterpiece is returned to Jewish family after over 80 years
After a twenty-year battle with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), the painting ‘Lady with a Fan’ has been returned to the Jewish family, forced to sell it to the Nazis in the 1930s.
The painting is an oil on canvas artwork dated to between 1660-1663 and painted by the 17th century Dutch master Gerard ter Borch.
The NGV has returned the Nazi-looted painting to the German-Jewish Bromberg family, which has been campaigning for twenty years to regain the artwork. Now, the painting has been returned to the heirs of the descendants of Henry and Bertha Bromberg. The gallery’s decision came after the NGV uncovered several new pieces of evidence proving that the painting was stolen and rightfully belonged to the Bromberg family. The NGV has chosen not to disclose the nature of the new evidence.
The artwork is no longer listed on the NGV website but is listed on the German Lost Art Foundation Lost Art Database at lostart.de/en/lost/object/lady-fan-also-portrait-woman-femme-leventail-probablement-la-femme-du/526725. The Lost Art Database now notes against the artwork, “Return to the heirs of Henry Bromberg, 2025. Status: restituted.”
Naomi Levin, CEO of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, told J-Wire, “The passing of time does not dilute grave injustices. This remarkable return to the original owners shows it is never too late to make things right. We applaud the National Gallery of Victoria for righting a wrong.”
The NGV told J-Wire, “The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) received a request to consider the provenance of the painting Lady with a Fan (c. 1660-1663) by Dutch artist Gerard ter Borch, which was acquired by the NGV in 1945. After thoroughly assessing the painting’s background and origins, the NGV determined that the work had been owned by Dr Henry Bromberg and was subject to a forced sale in the late 1930s, and that the heirs of Dr Bromberg were the rightful owners of the painting. The painting was subsequently deaccessioned from the NGV Collection in 2025 and returned to the Bromberg family.”
Jason Schulman is a 2025 Fulbright Scholar to Australia who has conducted research on potentially Nazi-looted art in Australian museums. Schulman said that the return of the artwork was “rare and quite significant”.
“This is only the second time an Australian museum has restituted a piece from the Nazi era. The first was ‘Head of a Man’ in 2014. Both times it was the NGV.
The Emden family has been claiming the painting for 20 years. But it’s quite clear from archival sources that the painting really belonged to their cousins, the Brombergs.”
‘Lady With a Fan’ was part of the art collections of Max Emden, a department store owner and philanthropist in Hamburg until he left Germany in the 1920s, and his cousin, Henry Bromberg, a judge in Hamburg who escaped Germany just before the war. The Nazis stole and/or sold off the collections of the families as they did with many other Jewish families after the came to power in 1933.
Discussions had been underway with the NGV and the Emden and Bromberg sides of the family, with a disagreement in the family over which side should receive the artwork. That disagreement has been resolved and the painting returned to the Brombergs. The families also had to prove that the artwork had been stolen or the sale forced.
The NGV originally claimed that Max Emden had sold the painting because of financial distress caused by Germany’s hyperinflation and depression, not because of the Nazis.
Schulman told J-Wire, “Whenever a piece of art that was lost because of the Nazi regime–whether through confiscation or because of discrimination or coercion–is returned to a family, that’s a positive step. Personally, I would have liked the museum to be more open about its decision-making process.”
Could more of these issues still play out in Australia? Schulman told J-Wire, “Given how international the art market is, and how many people came from Europe to Australia after WWII, the fact that there have only been now two cases like this (‘Head of a Man’ and ‘Lady with a Fan’) is a bit surprising. Could there be more Nazi looted artworks in Australian museums? Possibly, but not very likely.”
Other museums may look at this case and think about how they will handle suspected Nazi-looted art in the future.
“Each case should be treated individually, and this case does not set a precedent for other museums if they discover a piece of Nazi looted art. However, there is a sort of informal precedent – museums obviously look at what other museums have done for some guidance”, said Schulman.
