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“The National Gallery of Victoria received a request to consider the provenance of the painting Lady With a Fan (c. 1660-1663) by Dutch artist Gerard ter Borch, which was acquired by the NGV in 1945.
“After thoroughly assessing the painting’s background and origins, the NGV determined that the work had been owned by Dr Henry Bromberg and was subject to a forced sale in the late 1930s, and that the heirs of Dr Bromberg were the rightful owners of the painting. The painting was subsequently de-accessioned from the NGV Collection in 2025 and returned to the Bromberg family.”
Jason Schulman, a 2025 Fulbright Scholar to Australia who has conducted research on potentially Nazi-looted art in Australian museums, has a particular interest in this work. “There have been claims for Lady With a Fan for 20 years, so it was a painting that I spent a lot of time researching,” he says. “In early September this year, I went to check something about Lady With a Fan on the NGV website and noticed it had been removed.”
The return of Lady With a Fan marks Australia’s second known successful claim for restitution of art, following the 2014 return by the NGV of Head of a Man to the heirs of Jewish industrialist Richard Semmel. The work, which had been owned by the NGV for 74 years, was believed to have been painted by Vincent van Gogh until a 2007 inspection by the Van Gogh Museum led to the institute decreeing that it was not, in fact, a van Gogh piece.
Another painting from the Bromberg collection, the 16th-century work Portrait of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony, was purchased by The Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania, in 1961. After a 2022 restitution claim, the museum agreed to sell the work and share the proceeds with Bromberg’s descendants. The painting was sold via Christie’s in early 2025 for $US327,600 ($503,000).
