Creator
Salomon van Ruysdael (Dutch, 1600/1603–1670)
Object Title
View of Beverwijk
Measurements
75.2 x 65.7 cm (29 5/8 x 25 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund and Henry H. and Zoe Oliver Sherman Fund
Creation Date
1646
Museum Name
Object Type
Object URL
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/34506
Claim Resolution
Resolution
Work restituted to heirs or other representatives
Resolution Date
October 25, 2021
Details of Resolution
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) reached an agreement with the heirs of Ferenc Chorin to return the painting View of Beverwijk by Salomon van Ruysdael, which was looted during World War II.
The painting belonged to the Jewish collector Ferenc Chorin (1879 – 1964) of Budapest, who deposited it along with other works of art at the Hungarian Commercial Bank of Pest in 1943. Chorin and his family were persecuted by National Socialist forces, fled Hungary in 1944, and settled in New York in 1947. At the end of World War II, the bank reported that the contents of Chorin’s deposit had gone missing in January 1945, during the Siege of Budapest. Despite the family’s efforts to locate the contents of the bank vault in the postwar years, they never recovered the Ruysdael. The painting was included in a 1998 publication on Hungarian war losses, but because it was published with an incorrect image and description, the MFA was not aware that the View of Beverwijk had belonged to Chorin or was considered missing.
The Museum acquired the painting in 1982 from a London dealer with no information about its history other than that it had come from a Swiss collection. The work’s provenance between 1945 and 1982 remains untraced.
In 2019, scholar Sándor Juhász notified the MFA that the View of Beverwijk once belonged to Frigyes Glück of Budapest, in whose collection it had been published in 1924. This new information, posted on the MFA’s website, allowed the Chorin heirs to locate their family’s painting—known to have come from the Glück collection—in 2021
The painting belonged to the Jewish collector Ferenc Chorin (1879 – 1964) of Budapest, who deposited it along with other works of art at the Hungarian Commercial Bank of Pest in 1943. Chorin and his family were persecuted by National Socialist forces, fled Hungary in 1944, and settled in New York in 1947. At the end of World War II, the bank reported that the contents of Chorin’s deposit had gone missing in January 1945, during the Siege of Budapest. Despite the family’s efforts to locate the contents of the bank vault in the postwar years, they never recovered the Ruysdael. The painting was included in a 1998 publication on Hungarian war losses, but because it was published with an incorrect image and description, the MFA was not aware that the View of Beverwijk had belonged to Chorin or was considered missing.
The Museum acquired the painting in 1982 from a London dealer with no information about its history other than that it had come from a Swiss collection. The work’s provenance between 1945 and 1982 remains untraced.
In 2019, scholar Sándor Juhász notified the MFA that the View of Beverwijk once belonged to Frigyes Glück of Budapest, in whose collection it had been published in 1924. This new information, posted on the MFA’s website, allowed the Chorin heirs to locate their family’s painting—known to have come from the Glück collection—in 2021