The city of Hagen acquires the painting "View of the Sea from Haut Cagnes to the Sea" by the French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 to 1919) for the Osthaus Museum Hagen. During the Nazi era, the work was unlawfully confiscated from its then owner, the Jewish banker Jakob Goldschmidt. The city of Hagen has now restituted the painting to Goldschmidt's heirs and immediately reacquired it. The Kulturstiftung der Länder is funding the purchase with 70,000 euros.

Renoir's painting "View from Haut Cagnes to the Sea" has been on display at the Osthaus Museum in Hagen since 1989. Since 2007, the museum has had a claim for restitution by the heir to the Berlin banker and art collector Jakob Goldschmidt (1882-1955). In accordance with the Washington Principles of 1998 and the "Joint Declaration" of 1999, the museum has now been able to reach a fair and just solution, restituted the painting to Goldschmidt's heirs and then repurchased it. Renoir's Cȏte-d'Azur landscape continues to be on display in the museum's permanent collection, accompanied by explanations of its history and significance.

The picture was taken around 1910

In the painting, Renoir captured the view of olive groves and the distant Mediterranean Sea from Haut Cagnes with oil on canvas. He signed the 29.5 x 47 cm painting "P A Renoir" in the lower left corner. The completed work shows Renoir's soft painting style, which became characteristic of his work after 1900. After Renoir created the painting in 1910, it was in the artist's studio until 1919. After the artist's death, the Kunsthandlung Bernheim-Jeune in Paris and (presumably) the Galerie Mathiesen in Berlin made it into the Jakob Goldschmidt Collection, Berlin-Neubabelsberg, around 1928/29. Goldschmidt was one of the most important bankers of the Weimar Republic. Because of his Jewish faith and position, Goldschmidt was subjected to persecution by the National Socialist regime. He fled Germany in 1933 and emigrated to the United States via Switzerland in 1936. His German citizenship was revoked in 1940.

In 1941, Goldschmidt's entire fortune was confiscated without compensation for the benefit of the German Reich, including the Renoir painting. After the end of the war, he sought the restitution of his expropriated art collection. In 1941, the Renoir painting "View of the Sea from Haut Cagnes" was auctioned. In the years that followed, it changed hands and was located in Templin, on Lake Constance, in Zurich and Cologne, among other places. In 1958/59 Fritz Berg acquired the work, making it part of the private collection of the Rhenish Berg couple. Since the foundation of the Berg Collection in 1989, Renoir's work has been part of the permanent collection of the Osthaus Museum Hagen. The Berg private collection enabled the Osthaus Museum Hagen to rebuild the collection with comparable works, which had been sold to Essen by the Osthaus heirs in 1922. Renoir's "View of the Sea from Haut Cagnes" is clearly reminiscent of the collection profile of Karl Ernst Osthaus, who particularly appreciated Renoir and visited him personally in Cagnes.