Johanna Meyer-Udewald

[3] The itinerary and ownership history of the painting would take many years to uncover, involving many actors in the art market, the cultural heritage sector, Holocaust and provenance researchers.

Fifty years later, with the help of the Art Loss Register, the heirs of Ernst Schlesinger and Duncan C. Phillips signed an ownership agreement, the terms of which were kept secret.

As proof of ownership, they provided a page from a catalog relating to an exhibition held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1939, which stated that the painting had been on loan from a private collector.

The ALR located the work in the collection of Duncan V. Phillips in Chicago and discovered that Ernst Schlesinger's will specified the painting should return to his widow after Meyer-Udewald's death.

During this investigation, the ALR discovered Ernst Schlesinger's will, which revealed that the Meyer-Udewald heirs were not the legatees of the painting, their great-aunt having received only the usufruct of the canvas.