Provenance Research

The spoliation of art collections during the Nazi period, a sordid corollary to the deportations, was one of the most tragic episodes in recent history. Canada's museums, like their counterparts in Europe and the United States, must endeavour to shed more light on the provenance of their collections, in the knowledge that such research may be long and difficult, and that a code of ethics needs to be established to govern its progress.

With this page on our Web site, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is committing itself, in concert with other museums in Canada and elsewhere, to helping with the work of locating artworks plundered during World War II. Although no claim on any item in our collection has been made to date - and it makes more sense to restitute a work to an individual who has made a rightful claim than to set out in search of possible owners in a void - the Museum intends to provide information on its European paintings and sculptures executed before 1946 and acquired since 1933 for which the provenance is incomplete for the years 1933 to 1945. Our collection is a public one (it is not hidden in a bank vault), and for many years we have been publishing catalogues and making our archives accessible to researchers. However, using the Internet will allow us to disseminate this information on a much vaster scale and with maximum efficiency.

The provenances of about two hundred works in our collection are currently incomplete to varying degrees for the years 1933 to 1945. It should not be forgotten that gaps prior to the Nazi period may be equally important, for one of the unchanging characteristics of the world of art dealers and sales rooms is discretion as to the precise origin of works. We should emphasize all the same that the known histories of most of these pieces suggest little likelihood of their being World War II spoils. They are not, therefore, "suspect". Nevertheless, the Museum is committed to sharing information about this question and updating documentation as research progresses. The history of art is a relatively new discipline; as years go by, new research adds to our knowledge of a work's history or of the whole output of an artist.

The provenance of the works posted on the site has been culled from the Museum's object files and other museum records, such as its annual reports, minutes of committee meetings, bequest files and donor files. References to auction sales, exhibition histories and bibliographic citations have been verified where possible.

The list on the site will be updated whenever new information becomes available. Paintings on the site can be accessed in two ways: by the artist's name (including past attributions), and by subject (portraits, still lifes, landscapes, religious subjects, group scenes). Sculpture forms a separate category, regardless of subject.

We thus hope we have taken a major step in the direction of greater transparency, indeed of justice, in terms of a more precise knowledge of the history of our collections: the only intellectual discipline that keeps us from drifting into exaggeration and confusion.

Last updated on September 20, 2011