Art: Dutch Bouquet

A small chunk of Hitler’s art collection went on view in Washington’s National Gallery last week: 48 canvases by 16th and 17th Century Dutch artists. They were part of an elaborate bread-&-butter letter the Dutch Government had written the U.S. Hitler had “collected” most of the paintings from a Jewish-owned art house—Goudstikker of Amsterdam:—for a museum in memory of his mother. (He assumed that all the North European paintings he liked must necessarily be “German” in inspiration.) U.S. soldiers rediscovered the Dutch loot among 4,000 paintings hidden in a salt mine at Alt Aussee.

Except for two Rembrandts, the paintings at the National Gallery were mostly minor masterpieces by such Dutch genre and landscape painters as Steen, Aver-camp and Van der Neer. They added up to $1,000,000 worth of intimate history from a flat, fat land. The loan show was starting a one-year tour of the 114 U.S. museums which had supplied men for the Army’s fine arts section. It had been selected by Art Professor Alphons Voren-kamp of Smith College (who helped identify many of the paintings when he was a wartime lieutenant colonel in the Dutch Army). Said Vorenkamp: “I thought it fitting that Dutch paintings should convey the thanks of the Dutch people. [These are just] a few flowers from a large bouquet.”