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- Two 17th-century paintings stolen by the Nazis during WWII have been discovered at an Ohio auction house.
- The artworks, believed to be by Dutch artist Ambrosius Bosschaert, were seized from a Jewish family in Paris in 1943.
- The paintings were found among items from an abandoned safe-deposit box and were set for auction before the sale was halted.
- If authenticated, the paintings will be returned to the descendants of the original owners.
An 80-year search for two 17th century paintings stolen by the Nazis during World War II and last seen in the Munich headquarters of Adolf Hitler has ended at an Ohio auction house.
If their authenticity is confirmed, the artworks valued at up to $1 million each will be returned to the descendants of Adolphe and Lucie Haas Schloss, a Jewish family in Paris whose entire collection of 333 paintings was hunted down, seized and divvied up by Nazi officials and their French collaborators in 1943.
Robert Edsel, founder of the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, said he is highly confident the two paintings are among hundreds of thousands of works of art taken from museums, churches and private owners during the war that remain missing.
“I might be wrong, but there’s point-zero, zero, zero, zero chance (of that),” he said.
Edsel, who wrote the 2009 book “The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History,” traveled to Ohio on Sept. 4, less than 48 hours after foundation researchers received a tip about paintings advertised for sale through Apple Tree Auction Center in Newark.
The paintings, described as “exquisitely detailed florals,” were among items from abandoned bank safe-deposit boxes at a Texas repository that were shipped to the auction house for sale to the highest bidders.
Apple Tree was accepting bids online — the highest was $3,250 for one and $225 for the other — for an auction that was scheduled to conclude Sept. 12. The third-generation family-run business halted the sale and removed information about the paintings from its website after Edsel told them in person of the works’ likely history.
Vice President Debbie Goddard said the ethics of the auction industry preclude her from disclosing who sent the items to Apple Tree for sale. Apple Tree didn’t purchase the two paintings, she said. It was hired to sell them.
The auction house did some research into the paintings and artist but didn’t know they were included in databases of missing art until Edsel told her and two other employees during his Sept. 4 visit, Goddard said.
The paintings are by Dutch artist Ambrosius Bosschaert
The two paintings, each just 5 inches wide and 8 inches long, are remarkably vibrant and well-preserved, especially for their age of at least 504 years. They’re oil-on-copper representations of flowers in vases and are believed to have been painted by Ambrosius Bosschaert, a Dutch artist who lived from 1573 to 1621.
Similar Bosschaert still-lifes are part of museum collections in cities such as Amsterdam, London, Paris, Vienna and Washington, D.C. An 11-by-14-inch painting by Bosschaert from 1606 hangs in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Like the two pieces discovered in Newark, the Cleveland painting depicts a vase of tulips, orchids, jonquils and other flowers set on a table against a black background.
“The flowers in this bouquet might be common today, but in the 1600s they were costly rarities,” the museum’s description of “Flowers in a Glass” reads. “Bosschaert captured their fragile beauty with luminous colors and exquisite detail.”
The Bosschaert paintings from the Schloss family’s collection are pictured in an online database of artworks stolen during World War II that’s maintained by the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project, a project of museums, national archives and other organizations from Europe and the United States.
There, both paintings are titled, “Fleurs,” with alternate titles listed in German (“Blumenstück”) and English (“Flowers”). The black-and-white photos in the project’s database and the dimensions listed there for the missing Bosschaert works match the paintings in Newark.
How did the paintings end up in Nazis’ hands?
Historians estimate that millions of paintings, sculptures, rare books and other pieces of art were stolen by the Nazis across Europe between 1939 to 1945. The Monuments Men, a group of art scholars and museum curators that Allies tasked with protecting cultural landmarks during the war and locating looted art afterward, returned more than 4 million pieces by the time their work ended.
According to “The Schloss Story: Art, War and Restitution,” published in June 2025 by the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, the Schloss family’s collection was known, coveted and targeted for seizure by senior Nazi officials after France surrendered to Germany and Hitler in 1940.
Their 333 paintings were confiscated in 1943. The French kept 49 for the Louvre, and the Germans sent 262 works to the Führerbau, or leader’s building, in Munich. The remaining 22 paintings were sold.
Rose Valland, a secret member of the French resistance who worked inside a Paris museum known as the Jeu de Paume, wrote in her memoir years later that Hitler complained he got only “beautiful crumbs” from the Schloss collection. They were marked for inclusion in a planned-but-never-built Führermuseum in Linz, Austria.
A German inventory list titled “Gemälde der Niederlandischen Schule,” or Paintings of the Dutch School, that’s now in possession of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration listed two Bosschaert paintings from the Schloss collection as numbers 16 and 17.
The numbers S-16 and S-17 are marked on the back of the two paintings discovered in Newark. There’s also a partially removed paper label with the words Caisse 1, or Box 1, still visible on painting S-17. Edsel said its blue scrolling is identical to inventory labels used by the French.
How did Nazi-looted art end up in Newark, Ohio?
A Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project timeline of the Bosschaert paintings’ transfers among bureaucrats in France and Germany indicates they were last seen at the Führerbau in Munich on April 29 or 30, 1945. Germans looted the government building on those two days. U.S. troops entered Munich on April 30.
Edsel said it’s possible the paintings were brought to the United States in the duffel bag of a returning U.S. service member. Even though General Dwight Eisenhower ordered them not to, many American GIs came home with souvenirs of their service. Hundreds of World War II veterans and their families have contacted the Monuments Men and Women Foundation since it was founded in 2007 to seek advice and assistance about banners, books, paintings and other items kept as mementoes.
Although Apple Tree Auction Center hasn’t disclosed the source of the paintings to Edsel, the foundation or The Dispatch, which accompanied him on his stop there Sept. 4, Goddard said banks take possession of what’s inside safe-deposit boxes when an owner dies and no relatives come forward within five years.
Edsel said he doesn’t want to punish, tarnish the memory or even publicly identify the person who eventually packed the two paintings into a small black box, kept them protected by tissue paper, and put them away for safekeeping. The foundation hasn’t needed to involve law enforcement in any of the 30 cases where it has investigated and returned missing artifacts, he said.
If someone brought the paintings home after service in the U.S. military, said Anna Bottinelli, president of the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, the group’s researchers would like to contact the families of others in his unit to see if there are more treasures that can be returned to their rightful owners.
“Hundreds of thousands of cultural objects looted during World War II are still missing,” said Bottinelli, who is married to Edsel. “Some are in the United States, tucked away in attics, hanging on walls and stuffed in unopened boxes, passed down through generations.”
As the generation of Americans who fought the war passes on, Botinelli said, she expects more discoveries of long-missing art and artifacts. People can call the foundation’s tip line at 1-866-WWII-ART or 1-866-994-4278.
Bob Vitale can be reached at rvitale@dispatch.com.
