Europe 1 with AFP 5:34 p.m., February 10, 2023

The French State must return to the heirs of the art dealer Ambroise Vollard two paintings and two drawings by Gauguin, Renoir and Cézanne.

It is the administrative court of Paris which ordered it, this Friday, February 10.

The Musée d'Orsay confirmed to AFP that it is the depositary of the four works.

The Paris administrative court on Friday ordered the French state to return to the heirs of art dealer Ambroise Vollard two paintings and two drawings by Gauguin, Renoir and Cézanne, who disappeared at the end of the Second World War.

These works, "Marine: Guernsey" (painting) and "The Judgment of Paris" (drawing) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, "Still Life with Mandolin" (painting) by Paul Gauguin and "Undergrowth" (drawing) by Paul Cézanne, had disappeared in troubled conditions with three other paintings - "Roses in a Vase" and "The Large Bathers" by Renoir and "Head of an Old Man" by Cézanne - during the Second World War, following the dispersion of the estate of the art dealer, who died in 1939.

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The Musée d'Orsay confirmed to AFP that it is the depositary of the four works.

The two drawings are kept in the graphic arts cabinet of the Louvre Museum.

The two experts mandated for this succession would have diverted the works with the complicity of one of the merchant's brothers in order to sell them in Germany, the country where they were found at the end of the war, specifies the court in a press release.

The heirs to the estate of Ambroise Vollard had asked the management of the museums of France and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the restitution of these seven works classified in the MNR directory (national museums recovery), created to ensure the custody of spoliated works. in France during the Second World War and found outside France.

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Following a procedure based on complex case law, the State had refused the return of four of them in 2018, a decision whose rights holders had requested the cancellation.

Once the ownership of the works was confirmed in 2022 by the Paris court and the court of cassation, the administrative court ruled on Friday that the state had "wrongly" refused to return them to their legitimate owners.

This decision can still be appealed to the administrative court of appeal of Paris.