“Trois danseuses en buste,” a late 19th-century charcoal sketch of three ballerinas by Edgar Degas which was discovered in 1951 in the building where the Nazi German Embassy resided during the occupation and had since been in the Louvre, was finally returned to its rightful owners on Monday, news outlets reported.
French Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay handed the work to Viviane Dreyfus, whose late father Maurice, the owner of the stolen drawing, died in 1957. Ms. Dreyfus said she was “extremely touched” by the gesture, and confessed she didn’t know the work existed, much less that her family owned it, since her father had never spoken about it.
According to the French government, the country’s museums are in possession of some 2,000 similarly unclaimed works, out of which some experts are certain at least 145 were stolen from their Jewish owners by the Nazis.