When art history major Lauren Howell ’15 began her internship assignment at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in January, she couldn’t have predicted the speed at which she would succeed. Her assignment was to trace the provenance—the history of ownership—of works from the museum’s permanent collection.
“There was a stack of files, and the five on top were all works by Dutch painters,” Howell says. “I like Dutch painters, so I thought, ‘Why not?’ I started from scratch, looking at online auction catalogs and databases.”
In the basement of the Brooks, she began her online investigation of Jan van Goyen’s painting River Scene, also known as Landscape with Figures, as part of the museum’s Nazi-era provenance research project, described on the museum’s website as “the nationwide effort to identify works of art that may have been illegally confiscated from their rightful owners by the Nazi regime during World War II.” The painting was a gift to the Brooks from Mr. and Mrs. Morrie A. Moss. The Moss family is also a major benefactor of Rhodes College.
“The goal is to fill the gaps, especially around World War II,” Howell notes. History has well documented the thefts by Nazi troops of irreplaceable works of art during the course of the war. But often, tracing the provenance of a work proves difficult, if not impossible. The ability to do so ensures museums have clear title to the art object. And Howell’s research did just that. Her only clue was a 1955 online auction catalog for Howard Young Galleries in New York in which the painting was listed. Through online database research, she then discovered an earlier auction by Frederik Muller & Co. on May 20, 1919. She turned to the Netherlands Institute for Art History for assistance in covering the intervening years.
“I looked around on their website and found a contact, and I emailed him in Amsterdam. He was very timely. The next day, I came in and he had sent me scans of the catalog of Van Goyen’s work that they had of our specific painting and it filled in the gap,” she says.
The information Howell found traced the ownership of the painting through the critical wartime period of 1933-1945. She proved the piece was not stolen by the Nazis. Additionally, she was able to pinpoint the original date of the painting to 1627; previous information indicated the work was created circa 1640.
“These sorts of discoveries are important not only for the Brooks Museum but also for the history of art in general,” says Dr. Victor Coonin, associate professor of art at Rhodes. “It helps us understand the provenance of this painting and adds an element to studies of the history of taste, collecting, the art market, and the historical context of a painting over time. This is very exciting work.”
While the Brooks internship piqued Howell’s interest in provenance research as a possible career, she knows her first find is rare. “Unfortunately, it’s the norm that you don’t find anything.”