Portrait looted by Nazis found in home of Dutch SS leader’s descendants

an art detective has said. Portrait of a Young Girl, by Dutch artist Toon Kelder, is believed to have hung for decades in the home of Hendrik Seyffardt’s family, Arthur Brand said. It had belonged to Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who died while fleeing the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, leaving behind a collection of more than 1,000 paintings. The case was brought to Brand’s attention by a man who told him he was a descendant of Seyffardt and that he was “disgusted” to learn his family had kept the artwork for years. Seyffardt was a Dutch general who commanded a Waffen-SS unit of volunteers on the eastern front before he was assassinated by resistance fighters in 1943. Shortly after learning he was related to the Nazi collaborator, the man approached his grandmother to ask about the painting’s history. She is said to have told him it had been purchased during World War Two and that it was “Jewish looted art, stolen from Goudstikker. It is unsellable. Don’t tell anyone.” (BBC)