Intended for the Hitler Museum, a painting will hang at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

It is a unique journey that the Customers conversing in a tavern by the Dutch painter Adriaen van Ostade experienced before entering the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Sold to the Nazis during the Second World War, it was intended to complete the collection of the Fürhermuseum, Hitler's art museum.

The work was part of the collection of Paul Graupe, a German and Jewish art dealer. In 1937, he fled Nazi Germany and opened his gallery in the French capital with his partner Arthur Goldschmidt, also a German Jew. A few months before war broke out in France, Paul Graupe fled to Switzerland and then to Portugal before setting sail for the United States.

As for his business partner, he went into exile in the south of France. Paul Graupe, who hopes to save his collection, asks him to smuggle his treasures overseas according to Boston.com. But Arthur Goldschmidt makes an agreement with Karl Haberstock, a Berlin art dealer known for having sold paintings looted from Hitler. And the Führer wants to hang the work of Adriaen van Ostade in the museum he dreams of installing in Linz.

After the armistice, the painting was sent to France and sold at auction in 1951. It circulated on the European art market before being purchased by collectors Susan and Matthew Weatherbie in 1992. They wanted to give Customers conversing in a tavern as well as 27 other Dutch and Flemish paintings at the MFA in Boston. The museum has doubts about the provenance of the painting. Like many works that disappeared during the war, the question is who it belongs to: the heirs of art dealers Arthur Goldschmidt and Paul Graupe or the collector couple. According to the latter, an agreement has been reached with the descendants for the painting by Adriaen van Ostade to enter the museum.

In France, a bill concerning the restitution of spoliated works was presented in April by the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak. It aims to facilitate the restitution of works looted by the Nazis during the war and found in public collections. It is estimated that nearly 100,000 works of art were looted during the Second World War in France, of which 60,000 were found in Germany after the Liberation.