New research reported by Het Parool links Carl Gottlieb Peschel's 1831 painting 'Joseph Sold by His Brothers' to the Nijkerk family of Amsterdam, whose descendants have filed no restitution claim.
New research has traced a Nazi-era painting to a Dutch Jewish family, according to the Dutch newspaper Het Parool, as reported by ARTnews. The work is Carl Gottlieb Peschel's 'Joseph Sold by His Brothers' (1831), which depicts the biblical scene of Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt. The research indicates that it spent time in Adolf Hitler's Berlin home and was later moved to his storage facility in Munich, where prized works were held for a planned Führermuseum. Today it is in the Martin von Wagner Museum in Würzburg, Germany.
The painting once belonged to Bob Nijkerk, who died in 1987 and whose family had made its fortune in the iron and scrap-metal business. He received the Peschel as a gift from his brother-in-law in 1941, the year the Nazis seized the family company after occupying Amsterdam. Nijkerk, his wife and their three children were initially spared deportation after Stedelijk Museum curator Willem Sandberg intervened to place them on an exception list of about 700 Jews. They were later deported to Westerbork and then Theresienstadt, and all five survived after being brought to Switzerland by train in 1945. It remains unclear whether Nijkerk sold the painting in late 1941 or early 1942, or whether it was confiscated later.
The findings come from Diederik Oostdijk, a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who tells the family's story in his new book 'Overlevingskunst' (The Art of Survival). Nijkerk's seven descendants have not filed a formal restitution claim for the Peschel, nor for three other works Oostdijk links to the collection: two 1633 portraits by Caspar Netscher and a 1673 painting by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, all at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Nijkerk's grandson Willem told Het Parool that if the paintings were ever restituted, the family would likely sell them.
