ART TREASURES

Grey River Argus, 22 September 1944, Page 7

ART TREASURES

TAKEN BY GERMANS. NEW YORK, September 19. Although the great French art collections apparently are intact, Ghent has lost its most famous art possession, Van Eyk’s “The Mystic Lamb,” says the “New York Times’s” Paris correspondent. This Fifteenth Century masterpiece had been sent to France for safe keeping, but in August, 1942, Abel Bonnard, then Minister of Fine Arts at Vichy, ordered the French to deliver it to a German officer. The painting is now hanging at Goering’s castle near. Munich. The Belgian Government protested to Berlin against what they regarded as the theft of one of their greatest masterpieces. The German answer was: “‘lf you want your painting back, give us, instead the Archives of the Duke of Burgundy.” The Belgians refused to give up their most precious national document. Although the Germans did not loot the French nationally-owned 1 art, there was much forced buying from private collectors. A German would enter a chateau, arid tell the owner th/rt he was going to buy his tapestry or painting for an arbitrary number of marks, making it clear that, if the owner did not accept the offer, dire results would follow. Thus France lost a large number of pri-vately-owned art treasures.