Two paintings are returned to heirs

Two paintings that the Nazis forced a Jewish art dealer to sell off in the 1930s have been returned to his estate, and its heirs said Wednesday they were working hard to recover hundreds more.

The Max Stern estate is trying to recover all of the estimated 400 works sold off from Stern’s collection between 1935 and 1937, estate representative Clarence Epstein said. Only 25 have been located thus far, he said.

The returned paintings -- “Flight From Egypt,” by the circle of Jan Wellens de Cock, and “Girl From the Sabine Mountains,” by Franz Xaver Winterhalter -- will be loaned to art museums in Canada for display.

The request for the Winterhalter work wound its way through U.S. courts for more than a year until the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston last month ordered that it be returned to the Stern estate. The case set a precedent in the United States for restitution cases by equating works where Nazis forced a sale with art that was looted or stolen.