The painting "Laveuse" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), which had been looted by the Nazis during World War II and whose trail remained fragmented for decades due to successive title changes, was auctioned in Paris for 300,000 euros by the Drouot auction house.
The piece, measuring 30 x 35 cm and painted around 1916, features three female silhouettes constructed from color spots next to a body of water, in a style that borders on abstraction and moves away from the artist's usual figurativism.
The painting originally belonged to art dealer Alfred Weinberger, a Hungarian based in Paris in the 1920s, whose collection—which included five Renoirs and a Delacroix—was confiscated in 1941 by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Nazi organization dedicated to cultural plunder.
In November 2023, another painting by the artist, "The Boy and His Toys," depicting his son Jean Renoir and his nanny, was sold for 1.8 million euros.
After the war, the painting was included in the Directory of Looted Assets in France, without its whereabouts being located for decades. The work unexpectedly reappeared during the inventory of an estate of a collector who had purchased it in the 1980s at the Galerie Segoura. Upon reviewing the historical documentation, the heir detected signs of its illicit origin and notified the Giquello house, which suspended the sale operation and initiated proceedings for its restitution to Weinberger's descendants.
Once recovered, the family decided to entrust Drouot again with the marketing of the canvas, which was finally adjudicated for a little over 300,000 euros in an operation presented by the auction house as "an example of restitution culminating in a solid result." The sale adds to the sustained interest in Renoir's late work.
