A Vienna auction house has cancelled the planned sale of a 17th century Dutch Master painting after France complained the work had been stolen by the Nazis, its co-manager said Monday.
"We pulled the sale following a request from the French culture ministry, which pointed out to us that the work was subject to a suit from the Schloss collection," Ernst Ploil of the auction house Im Kinsky told AFP.
"Portrait of a Man" by Bartholomeus van der Helst, which had been due to go under the hammer on Tuesday, was part of a major art collection amassed by Adolphe Schloss, who was Jewish and died in Paris in 1910.
In 1943 as the Nazis ransacked occupied Europe and looted its art collections, they helped themselves to 333 of the works. "Portrait of a Man" was one of 167 from the Schloss collection, and many others, that vanished after 1945.