Mauritshuis to return Van Goyen painting to Goudstikker heir
The Netherlands will return a 1651 fishing scene by Jan van Goyen from the Mauritshuis in The Hague to the heir of a Jewish art dealer who died while fleeing the Nazis. Dutch culture minister Rianne Letschert has agreed to follow the advice of the Dutch Restitutions Committee that the loss was involuntary, The Art Newspaper reported.
The work is Fishermen by the Lakeshore, a small oil on paper painted in 1651. The Mauritshuis, the Dutch national collection for 17th-century painting, bought it in 1967 for 58,000 guilders.
Provenance research, the documented chain of ownership, matched the painting to the collection of Jacques Goudstikker. Goudstikker was a prominent Jewish dealer in Amsterdam. He died in 1940 while escaping by ship to England.
After his death, his dealership and its stock of 1,113 works were taken over without the agreement of his widow. That lack of consent is central to the case. The painting was transported to Germany and sold into the collection of Hermann Göring, the senior Nazi official who amassed art taken from Jewish owners.
The Dutch Restitutions Committee, the national body that advises on Second World War claims, recommended restitution — the formal return of a work — on 18 September 2026, the Committee said. It found the loss of possession was involuntary because Goudstikker’s widow had not consented to the transactions.
The named beneficiary is Marei von Saher. She is the widow of Eduard, Goudstikker’s only son. Letschert has agreed to return the painting to her.
The return is not yet finalised. The museum’s research programme notes that a formal restitution request must be submitted by the heirs, and it was awaiting that request.
For visitors, this means one small Van Goyen will leave a wall it has hung on for almost 60 years. The file behind it is longer. It runs from Amsterdam to Berlin, through a forced sale, a postwar national collection, and a provenance file that finally closed the gap.
