A centuries-old painting that graced the walls of London’s Tate Gallery for more than three decades will soon be returned to the descendants of a Belgian art collector who was persecuted by the Nazis during World War II.
The United Kingdom’s Spoliation Advisory Panel, which works to return Nazi-looted art, said Germans took Henry Gibbs’ 1654 oil canvas work “Aeneas And His Family Fleeing Burning Troy” from Samuel Hartveld’s collection as “an act of racial persecution.”
Art experts claim the painting — of scenes from Virgil’s epic Latin poem “The Aeneid” — was Gibbs’ commentary on the English Civil War.
The painting will be reunited with Hartveld’s heirs in the coming months.
The art dealer fled Belgium with his wife in 1940, as the Nazis invaded.
Hartveld survived World War II, but never saw his stolen collection again.
His home and paintings were reportedly sold by the Nazis for a “paltry sum.”
It is believed most of Samuel Hartveld’s pilfered collection still hangs on the walls of European museums.
His descendants initiated their claim to the painting in 2024.
The Tate acquired the painting in 1994, buying it from a gallery in Brussels.
