The Allentown Art Museum will sell a portrait by Lucas Cranach the Elder that belonged to a Jewish family forced to part with it as they fled Nazi Germany. The work will leave the museum’s collections and be auctioned at Christie’s New York during its Old Masters sale in January 2025.
The museum has reached an amicable agreement with the heirs of Henry Bromberg, the original owner of the work. The proceeds from the sale will be split between the two parties. In a statement, Max Weintraub, president and CEO of the Allentown Art Museum, said the museum has relinquished ownership of the work, which has been returned to the Bromberg family. “This work of art entered the market and eventually found its way to the museum only because Henry Bromberg had to flee persecution in Nazi Germany.”said Max Weintraub.
The sale averts a lawsuit between the Pennsylvania Museum and the Bromberg heirs. The Brombergs’ descendants had approached the Allentown Art Museum about the Cranach painting two years earlier. Neither side could agree on terms for acquiring the painting, with each side having different versions of the facts.
Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, Portrait of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony, 1534.
© Allentown Art Museum
According to the Bromberg heirs, the painting was sold under duress to art dealers before he fled to the United States. Records indicate that the painting and part of the Bromberg collection were acquired by Parisian art dealer Allen Loebl in 1938, three years after Bromberg and his wife Herta Bromberg fled Germany in 1935. The museum, for its part, believed that its research had not been conclusive in determining with certainty the conditions of acquisition.
The painting is titled Portrait of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony (1534), it has been part of the museum’s collection since 1961. It depicts George of Saxony, an administrator and opponent of Martin Luther. The institution had purchased the work from a private dealer in New York.
Christie’s has been able to confirm that the painting was painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop. “This painting has been known to the public for decades, but we took this opportunity to conduct new research”said Marc Porter, president of Christie’s America. Works attributed to Lucas Cranach are naturally worth more than those made by the master’s studio: Cranach’s Portrait of John Frederick I of Saxony sold for $7.7 million in 2018, while another painting attributed to Cranach and his studio sold for $1.1 million in 2009.
The Bromberg family is still searching for 90 other works that disappeared during the Nazi persecution, said Imke Gielen, the family’s lawyer.
