Stolen by the Nazi painting found in home of heirs of SS leader

Toon Kelder's painting has resurfaced amid family heirlooms. Auctions from 1940 and restitution proceedings still pending in the Netherlands.

In some living rooms, decoration ends up becoming an archive, even when nobody wants to call it that. A painting hung for years, a frame, a label on the back that resists dust, a number engraved in the wood. Then someone takes a closer look, asks the family a question and receives an answer that weighs more heavily than the painting itself. This is how a painting stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War came to light in the Netherlands, in the home of the descendants of Hendrik Seyffardt, a Dutch general who collaborated with the Nazis.who collaborated with the Nazis and was associated with the Waffen-SS, the armed SS units also mobilized on the Eastern Front.

The work is entitled "Portrait of a Young Girl" and is attributed to Dutch artist Toon Kelder. According to the reconstruction by art investigator Arthur Brand, the painting remained in the possession of the Seyffardt family for decades. Previously, it belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish art dealer from Amsterdam who was forced to flee after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. Goudstikker died trying to escape to safety, leaving behind an immense collection, estimated at over a thousand works. His gallery contained some 1,400 pieces, many of them looted by the Nazis, and his case remains one of the most famous for the restitution of stolen works in European history.

Number 92 on the frame

It all began with a Seyffardt descendant. After discovering his family's link with the collaborationist general, the man asked his grandmother for an explanation of the painting's provenance. The answer, reported in Brand's account, would have opened up a room that had remained closed for years: the painting had been bought during the war, it came from Goudstikker, it was looted Jewish art, and therefore impossible to sell.

The family member contacted Brand through a third party, convinced that making the story public was the only way to get the painting returned to Goudstikker's heirs. The family, which changed its name after the war, admitted to owning the painting, but claimed to be unaware of its true origin. The grandmother, according to statements reported in the Dutch press, said she had received it from her own mother and only now understands why the Goudstikker heirs want it back. Here, the question is less one of art catalogs than of family intimacy: what passes from hand to hand can become a habit, even when it stems from spoliation.

Brand began checking. On the back of the painting was a label from the Goudstikker collection. On the frame, the number 92. This detail led to the archives of a 1940 sale, when part of Goudstikker's confiscated collection was auctioned off. At entry 92 was a Portrait of a Young Girl by Toon Kelder. According to the investigator's reconstruction, the work was first snapped up by Hermann Göring, one of the most powerful men in the Nazi regime, then sold to Seyffardt before passing to his descendants.

Lawyers for the Goudstikker heirs, contacted by Brand, reportedly confirmed another fact: the dealer owned six paintings by Toon Kelder, and these works were indeed listed in the 1940 sale. The history of number 92 is therefore consistent with the label, the auction catalog and the provenance of the collection. In the case of looted art, the truth often emerges in this way: less spectacular than one might imagine, but more tenacious.

The house, the name changed

Hendrik Seyffardt had made a career in the Dutch army before becoming a figure of collaboration under the Nazi occupation. During the war, he was linked to the Netherlands Volunteer Legion, which fought alongside the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front. In 1943, he was shot dead by members of the Dutch Resistance. His death had a huge impact on Nazi propaganda at the time, especially as Seyffardt was a key figure in recruitment and collaboration in the occupied Netherlands.

The descendant at the origin of the affair is said to have declared that he was ashamed and considered it right to return the painting to the Goudstikker heirs. Arthur Brand, for his part, considers the discovery to be one of the strangest of his career. He explained that he had already dealt with cases of works of art looted by the Nazis, found in museums or prestigious public collections, but that he had never been involved in such cases.es or prestigious public collections, yet a painting from the Goudstikker collection found in the home of the descendants of a Dutch Waffen-SS general surpasses anything he has seen before.

The most disturbing part of this story is its moral dimension. The descendants, as Brand himself pointed out, carry a family legacy without being personally guilty of Seyffardt's crimes. Yet, according to the reconstruction, the painting has remained there for years. And when an object has such a history, to leave it hanging is also to let that history continue its work in silence.

An echo from Argentina

The case echoes another linked to the same collection. In 2025, a painting attributed to Giuseppe Ghislandi, "Portrait of a Lady", appeared in a photo published online by a real estate agency in Argentina. The work could be seen hanging above a sofa in a house near Buenos Aires that once belonged to the family of Friedrich Kadgien, a Nazi official who fled to South America after the war. This painting, too, came from the Goudstikker collection and had been wanted for decades.

When the Argentinian police arrived on the scene, the painting had disappeared. In its place, according to reconstructions, only traces remained on the wall and the suspicion that it had been moved in haste. The scene seems almost banal: a real-estate photo, a living room, a painting above a sofa. Then the image becomes evidence, or almost. Here again, as in the Dutch case, art stolen by the Nazis resurfaces inside a house, between furniture, heirs and transmitted silences.

Source : BBC