February 4, 2022

French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot stands next to Gustav Klimt's oil painting Rosebushes under the Trees (1905), 
as she announces the return of 15 Nazi-looted artworks to Jewish families at an event at Musee d'Orsa in Paris Alain Jocard / Getty Images

Several Nazi-pillaged artworks held in France's national collections could soon to be reunited with the families of their previous Jewish owners. The French National Assembly passed a law on Tuesday to return 15 artworks looted by authorities during the Nazi period.

The works include a landscape by Gustav Klimt, the Austrian art nouveau painter, which has an estimated value of £75 million, and a portrait by Marc Chagall, the Franco-Russian modernist, of his father.

“This decision to return a major artwork from the public collections illustrates our commitment to justice and to reparation for the looted families,” Bachelot said previously.

The French culture minister, Roselyne Bachelot, with Klimt’s Rosebushes Under the Trees at the Museée d’Orsay. Photograph: Alain Jocard/AP

The French government originally bought the painting in 1980, without knowing its background history, Bachelot told France's Parliament. It was only recently that researchers from France and Austria discovered the painting belonged to Eleonore Stiasny, also known as Nora Stiasny, niece of Jewish Austrian collector Viktor Zuckerkandl.

Roughly 100,000 artworks were looted in France during the war, according to a report published by the Working Party on the Spoliation of Jews in France, set up by the French government in 1997.