FACTS

1“Dance” by Matisse, the picture England sold her soul for

On October the 24th, 2007, an article signed Marcel Berlins published in the Guardian, (London) triggered a heated debate around the exhibition “From Russia, French and Russian Master Paintings 1870 – 1925”, which is due to start in London at The Royal Academy on January the 26th, 2008. This exhibition, which required more than two years preparation and negotiation with Russia, has gathered together more than 200 masterpieces from four of the greatest Russian museums: The Pushkin, Hermitage, Tretyakov and Russian museum.

This exhibition is coming to London after having been presented in Düsseldorf, Germany. The sponsor of the exhibition is the German gas giant E-ON one of the leading distributors of Russian gas.

Amongst the paintings that will be exhibited, are thirteen that originally came from The Morozov collection and 23 from the The Shchukin, among them is Matisse’s Dance, which is presented for the first time in Great Britain.

Though none of Morozov’s or Shchukin’s heirs have ever declared any intention of starting legal proceeding in Great Britain, a controversy has ensued over the fact that the Russian authorities insist that the British Government has not provided satisfactory guarantees for the safe keeping of these pictures, hired from Russian museums, against possible seizure claims from these heirs.

The Royal Academy & the British authorities have provided all documentation & contracts required under international law to allay any fears that the Russian government may have.

The families have been approached on a confidential basis & have been asked to commit themselves to written guarantees that they and no one else will take any legal action in the UK. They consider that as private individuals this legally binding request is going too far as, they are not in a position to completely guarantee safe conduct for paintings worth Billions of pounds.
They consider themselves to be victims of the greatest Art robbery in the history of Art and in no way the aggressors in this situation.

In December 2007, the Russian government announced that the exhibition would not take place if the English government did not or does not promulgate a law guaranteeing the non-seizability of the paintings during their stay on British soil. And the controversy continued in the European & Japanese press both of which have now taken a keen interest in this matter.

On December the 31st, the British government brought into force, a version of the law that should have satisfied all the demands of the Russians. The Great Britain ambassador in Moscow went so far as to declare to the Russian press that the new law had been specially designed to solve any possible legal problems brought about by Lenin’s confiscations.

On January, the 9th, 2008, Mr. Shvydkoy, manager of the Russian Federal Agency for culture and cinematography gave a press conference in order to announce that Russia is satisfied with the warranties given by Great Britain and that the paintings will be duly sent to London.

He asserts that the confiscation decrees of the years 1918-1919 shouldn’t be revised and calls on all foreign countries to acknowledge their lawfulness. It’s the first time since the beginning, more than fifty years ago, of Shchukin’s case that a Russian official authority is admitting that there exists a possible debate about the revision of Lenin’s spoliatory decrees.

2. Stolen paintings

I. Morozov and S. Shchukin never personally donated their collections to the USSR. Although all the Russian museums, curators, directors, and all the Russian ministers and State officers have always contended that it was their intention, before the revolution, to do so. Even though testaments to this effect have never been discovered or produced. In any case, both Morozov & Shchukin, dispossessed and forced to go into exile, have clearly, through their notarized testaments (in 1921 for Morozov and 1926 for Shchukin), positively revoked all their previous wills and have bequeathed to their heirs the universality of their belongings.

By decrees of November 1918 (Shchukin) and December 1919 (Morozov), Lenin proclaimed that the collections and the mansions in which they were housed & all surrounding land would become the property of the people and that no compensation would be paid. (See joined files).

From 1919 up to 1941, the collections were exhibited in Moscow in the Western Modern Art Museum set up in Morozov’s mansion, used because it was larger than Shchukin’s. (The Shchukin’s mansion was given to the Red Army and access was totally forbidden to visitors).

Thanks to Shchukin’s and Morozov’s genius and intuition and commissions the USSR capital had acquired the most beautiful modern art museum and collection in the world.

1941: As the Whermacht are approaching Moscow, the pictures are moved and sheltered on the other side of the Urals.

1945: The collections return to Moscow. The campaign against cosmopolitism and decadent art stops the reopening to visitors of the Western Modern Art Museum.

1948: By Stalin’s decree, the Museum is liquidated and the masterpieces of both collections are divided up haphazardly between The Leningrad Hermitage Museum and The Moscow Pushkin museum but without permission to exhibit them to the people.

1954: A “thaw” starts after Stalin’s death, and, for the first time, 40 Picasso’s are exhibited in Paris in The House of French Thought, an organization close to the French communist party.

Irina Shchukina, Serguey Shchukin’s daughter institutes a claim for seizure of 37 paintings belonging to her father.

The case of Shchukin and Morozov against Lenin begins.


3. Heirs point of view

At that time of great political idealism one could claim that the works bought and owned by Morozov and Shchukin were stolen by Lenin, who in so doing, procured for the Russian people, a magnificent, free of charge, cultural education.
And that if, since 1954, they took part in great international exhibitions, it was for cultural exchanges that generated no financial interest.

But the situation has changed :
Pissaro’s Avenue de l’Opera, Van Gogh’s Doctor Rey’s portrait, Vlaminck’s The stream, a river, Monet’s Pond in Montgeron, Gauguin’s she is called Vaïaraumati, Matisse’s Dance, Cezanne’s The Sainte Victoire mountain, Bonnard’s Dance in summer, Rousseau’s The poet and his muse, Denis’s Holy woods, Picasso’s Dryad, and so on… are no more only cultural treasures.

Nowadays, our collections give anybody involved, except the families who have build them up, the possibility to earn enormous sums of money, not only by the number of tickets sold for entrance to exhibitions (The Royal Academy expects one million visitors), but also through the merchandising they give rise to: catalogues, post cards, calendars, crockery, ties, fashion accessories, and so on…

That is to say that our collections have not only been plundered, but that they are used for purely mercantile ends under the cover of cultural exchanges. In London, one will have to pay £11 (pounds) i.e. 16 euros, for entrance to the exhibition. Before 1918, the Shchukin’s mansion was freely open to visitors.

Thus, Shchukin’s and Morozov’s heirs are subjected to a judicial internment, which forbids them any action during the stay in Great Britain of the works financed by their fathers.

This law deprives all of us of a fundamental right guaranteed by all the constitutions and international conventions on human rights i.e. the right for any citizen to take action under the prevailing law. We entrust our solicitor and companion from the first days: Maître Bernard Jouanneau will study if the judicial banning we are subject to, do not conflict with the European Convention of Human Rights also signed by Great Britain and also, what are the avenues of appeal open to us in this matter.

4. We don’t want to get back the paintings

We acknowledge the fact that our paintings are housed in the Russian museums.

But, they must also be allowed to be presented in the great exhibitions around the world for the benefit of all the art lovers, without becoming the subject of political scandals such as the London one in which we have become involved as silent, helpless and dismayed witnesses.

Russia, having become again a great nation of the international community, should not be using these collections as a political pawn in it’s arguments with foreign powers and should certainly not be in the humiliating position of insisting that it needs guarantees for the return of confiscated artwork.

We, the families, have never tried, although we have all legitimacy so to do, either to prevent an exhibition to take place nor to deprive the public of it. Every time we took the case to court, we did it in such a way that the works shouldn’t run any risk. We have withdrawn from any action as soon as our cause was widely echoed by the press and by mass opinion. In London, the scandal has exploded all by itself without any of our participation up to the moment when Great Britain’s government pronounced against us a “judicial internment” as if we, the despoiled, the victims, were potential aggressors in this case.

5 We want:

• Respect for the memory of S. Shchukin and I. Morozov and their names on every hanging and exhibition.

• Abolition of Lenin’s decree and the transfer of our collections to the Russian State in due form as it’s required in all democratic states and by international conventions, particularly the European Convention of Human Rights.

• A fair financial compensation.

• The transfer of Morozov’s and Shchukin’s mansions under the authority of Pushkin museum in order to transform them into exhibition places open to the public.

• Gathering of all the French paintings and sculptures of Morozov’s collection in one place.

• Gathering of the Shchukin’s collection with the reconstitution of certain hangings presently divided up between The Hermitage and The Pushkin museum such as Matisse’s Conversation or Gauguin’s iconostas.
  

6 Judicial episodes in the case Shchukin/Morozov versus Lenin

May 1954 : Irina Shchukin submitted to the Court of Paris a request for seizure of thirty-seven of Picasso's paintings that were being  exhibited for the first time in Paris in the House of French Thought. They were from her father's private collection. The exhibition was immediately closed and the paintings taken to the Russian embassy in Paris.
The Judge for urgent matters declared himself incompetent to deal with the case and referred it to another judge; Irina Shchukin curtailed her action as, meanwhile, the paintings had returned to Moscow.

February 1993 : The Soviet Union was replaced by the Russian Federation and Irina Shchukin wrote an open letter to the President, Boris Yeltsin. She never received a reply to her letter.

March 1993 : The Pushkin Museum and The Hermitage, where the collections of Shchukin and Morozov are housed, participate in the Matisse Exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris where they show twenty three paintings from Shchukin's collection and seven from the Morozov’s collection. Irina Shchukin requests the seizure of these works and of the catalogue, she requests this jointly with Pierre Konowaloff, Ivan Morozov's heir.
Michel Piotrovski, director of The Hermitage Museum announces that if even one painting is held, if only for fifteen minutes, there would not be after that even one work of Art from the Russians collections free to be lent to a foreign country. Irina Shchukin and Pierre Konowaloff withdraw.

May 2000 : André-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud, taking over from his mother  Irina,  (deceased in 1994,) requests from the Court in  Rome the seizure of one painting; Matisse’s The Dance, shown with thirty others from the collection in the exhibition One hundred Master Works from the Hermitage  at the Pope's Stables in the Quirinal. This action starts a few days before the end of the exhibition to attract Italian and international attention to the lack of any legal ruling concerning both the expropriation and the commercial exploitation of the works. The Dance is chosen because it appears on the paper bags at the shop of the exhibition, and is a good example of how the work is being exploited. Of course, the paintings can leave safely at the end of the exhibition before the Italian judge has the time to give his ruling, however. What Andre-Marc does not know is that The Dance is supposed to extend its stay in Italy to be shown in Milan, so when the director of the Hermitage hears about Andre Marc’s action he cancels this project and The Dance leaves Rome for Saint Petersburg with the other paintings. André-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud then withdraws his request; he has obtained the result he wanted: the flight of The Dance is a resounding scandal.

May 2003 : An exhibition of the paintings from the Shchukin and Morozov collections of the Pushkin Museum of Moscow is organised in the United States, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts (after Houston and Atlanta). Irina Antonova, the Head of the  Pushkin Museum is reported as admitting in the American newspapers that the exhibiting museums have paid a fee to the  Pushkin Museum for the right to show these works.
As a matter of fact the sponsor of the exhibition is the cigarette maker Altea (Marlboro) for whom the Russian market is essential as the anti-tobacco laws have become much tougher in the West.
Andre-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud takes his case to the Los Angeles Court.
He does not request the seizure of the works but as the American Museums are benefiting from their commercial exploitation, he requests some participation in these benefits. These paintings, now being exhibited on American soil, are after all, the works confiscated by Lenin from Serguei Shchukin his grandfather.
The State Department of the United States intervenes in the case to defend the Los Angeles Museum against the Shchukin heir, who is forced to withdraw.