PHILADELPHIA _ When the federal government recently announced that a painting stolen by the Nazis in 1933 from the family of a Berlin publishing tycoon had been recovered from the Arkell Museum in upstate New York, Anna Marley, curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, did a double take.
Yes, she was interested that "Winter," by American Gari Melchers, was among roughly 1,200 artworks acquired by the leftist Jewish publisher Rudolf Mosse that the Nazis seized from his descendants. His collection may have been the first art stolen from Germany's Jews by the Nazis.
Yes, she wondered how the painting made its way to a museum in Canajoharie, northwest of Albany. And, yes, she was interested that recovery and restitution efforts on behalf of the Mosse descendants were underway, more than 80 years after the artwork left Germany.
But there was something else. The painting bore a striking resemblance to a remarkable painting in PAFA's permanent collection _ Melchers' "Skaters," purchased by the academy in 1901 in the Netherlands, probably by PAFA's director at the time, Harrison Morris.
"'Gosh,'" she said she thought to herself, "'that looks just like our painting, but it's not quite the same. This is strange.'"
She first thought the PAFA version, which has a clear history of ownership and has never been in Nazi hands, must be a copy. The image depicts a young man and woman, older than adolescents but not that much older, walking through a brisk Dutch winter landscape. They're carrying ice skates, and the young woman has a skating stick _ she's supposed to keep hold of it to avoid any outdoor hanky-panky.
The PAFA image, which is on view in the Furness building, is an oil, about 3 {-feet high. The woman is wearing a brilliant purple cloak, and her partner, who is turned toward her so that his gaze passes out toward the viewer, wears a dark green jacket with his skates tossed over the shoulder.
The colors in the Arkell's "Winter" are different, and both figures look straight ahead, as though embarrassed to be seen together by the museum visitor.
The Arkell's painting, which is rendered in pastel, not oil, shines a light not just on Nazis and their almost immediate campaign to hound leftists, Jews and the media; it also draws attention to PAFA's "Skaters" _ a painting Marley considers one of the museum's treasures and one whose acquisition points to a great period for the institution at the turn of the 19th century.
