(New York, August 22, 2001) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Mr. Henry H. Newman announced today that they have reached a settlement in a recent dispute over a painting in the Museum’s collection, The Garden of Monet’s House in Argenteuil (1874), by Claude Monet.
In 1997 Mr. Newman, who resides in France, initiated a claim for the painting. The Painting had been purchased in Berlin by Mr. Newman’s grandfather, Henry Percy Newman, of Hamburg, Germany, in 1916 and placed in a bank vault in Berlin by Mr. Newman’s grandmother, in 1940, for safekeeping. During World War II, Carl Henry Newman (the claimant’s father), who was then serving in the German army, inherited the work. Mr. Newman claimed that the painting was stolen from then bank vault during the Soviet occupation of Berlin in 1945. Several issues remained in dispute between the parties, including how and when the painting was removed from the vault.
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman purchased the painting in good faith from A. & R. Ball Gallery in New York in 1952, and Mrs. Wrightsman gave the painting to the Museum in 1994. In 1997 Mr. Newman initiated the claim after he located a long lost family photograph that enabled him to identify the painting as the one owned by his family.
Pursuant to the settlement, Mr. Newman will receive a payment, which he and the Museum consider to be fair and reasonable, and Mr. Newman will give up all claims he may have to the painting. All other terms of the settlement will remain confidential.
The Museum’s provenance information on the painting is available on its website: www.metmuseum.org.
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