The remarkable Cornelius Gurlitt may go down in history as the greatest hoarder of art. Despite multiple police searches of his residences, more works are being discovered.
A landscape by Claude Monet has been found in a suitcase the late German collector Cornelius Gurlitt had with him during a hospital stay, the latest piece to emerge from his long-hidden art trove.
The suitcase was left at the hospital for unknown reasons, and was handed over earlier this week to the court-appointed administrator of Gurlitt’s estate, the task force investigating the pieces’ origin said Friday.
The latest find comes after officials in July reported finding a few more works at Gurlitt’s Munich apartment, including a sculpture apparently by Edgar Degas.
Like the Monet, they weren’t among 1,280 pieces authorities seized from the apartment in 2012 while investigating a tax case, a collection that included works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall. It wasn’t immediately clear where the Monet was kept and why it wasn’t seized.
The task force said it will check whether the Monet was stolen by the Nazis, as it is doing with many other works in Gurlitt’s collection.
It said it appears after initial examination that the light-blue landscape, painted on paper, may have been produced around 1864. The subject appears very similar to the French artist’s “View of Sainte-Adresse.”
