Visual Arts

WARSAW, Poland – A 17th-century Dutch painting whose Jewish owner was killed during World War II is to be auctioned this week after Poland helped broker an agreement between his descendants and the current owner.

The painting, A Boy, in Profile, Singing, in a Feigned Oval, is an oil by Pieter de Grebber from the late 1620s. Christie's auction house in London says the asking price at Friday's auction is between $40,000 and $60,000.

When World War II started, the work belonged to Abe Gutnajer, a leading Jewish art collector and antiquarian in Warsaw. Mr. Gutnajer was killed by Nazi troops in the Warsaw ghetto in July 1942, and the painting went missing.

The picture was either confiscated by Nazi officials under orders to take all Jewish property or looted by Nazi troops after Mr. Gutnajer and his family were forced into the Warsaw ghetto in 1940, said Wojciech Kowalski, who leads Poland's efforts to restitute works of art plundered during World War II.

The painting resurfaced in 2006, when an unnamed Latvian collector offered it for sale at Christie's.

The auction house confirmed the attribution to de Grebber of the unsigned work, which officials found on Poland's list of art that went missing during the war.

Mr. Kowalski, a Polish Foreign Ministry official, then spent two years helping negotiate a deal between the current owner and Mr. Gutnajer's descendants.

"The sides reached a just and fair solution," Mr. Kowalski said. That cleared the way for it to be auctioned with the approval of Eve Gutnajer-Infanti, the widow of Mr. Gutnajer's son, Ludwik, who lives in Philadelphia.

The Associated Press

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