News:

The London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe announced last week that a work by Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein was delivered by the Dresden Gemaldegalerie museum to London to be given to the heirs of the Rosauer family in Vienna.

Another work, by Johann Baptist Lampi the Elder, was returned to the family late last year. It had been in the custody of the German government.

The works were among 160 that belonged to three sisters, Malvine, Eugenie and Bertha Rosauer. Forced by their brother to remain unmarried, the sisters lived together in an apartment in Vienna.

Malvine died there in 1940 and the two younger sisters were murdered in Treblinka in 1942. Of the entire family left in Vienna, only one great-nephew, the late Rudolf Epstein, survived. He had managed to save a watercolor painting of the family’s home, in which many of the artworks were portrayed. The only other evidence is a list of property that the sisters had to provide to the Nazis.

Painstaking detective work revealed that the two now-restituted paintings were among the works that ended up in the hands of Hitler’s art dealer, Julius Bohler of Munich. They changed hands several times before settling in the Dresden museum. Negotiations for their return began in 2009.