Max Stern (gallery owner)

Max Stern (1904–1987) was a German-born art collector, dealer and philanthropist of Jewish heritage who fled Nazi persecution.

His father, Julius Stern, was a German-born Jew who worked in the textile industry, before becoming an art collector and dealer in Düsseldorf.

[2] Stern studied in Cologne, Berlin, Vienna and Paris, earning his doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1928 before entering the art business.

Musical Party by Dirck Hals and Landscape with Figures by Salomon van Ruysdael were eventually recovered with help from the Canadian government after the war had ended.

[3] One of the paintings from the Stern collection, Jan Wellens de Cock’s "Flight into Egyp"t, reappeared on June 26, 1970 in London at the Christie's auction in London for “Highly Important Pictures from the collection formed by the late Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the property of Heinz Kisters, Esq.

He hoped to join his sister at the gallery in London but after the war began was interred by the British as an enemy alien in a refugee camp on the Isle of Man for two years.

He took steps to be exempted from this status and made contact with the man who ran the Canadian Refugee Organization, William Birks, who immediately vouched for Stern.

Jesus Carles de Vilallonga, a catalan born artist and, later, canadian citizen, was a frequent exibitor in this gallery.

Jesús Carles de Vilallonga[14] Upon leaving Europe, Stern raised the level of art appreciation in Canada.

[16] In 2016, the Max Stern Restitution Project recovered two Dutch Old Masters paintings – Ships in Distress on a Stormy Sea by Jan Porcellis and Landscape with Goats by Willem Buytewech the Younger.

[17] In 2017, a scheduled exhibition in Düsseldorf about Stern and the Restitution Project was abruptly cancelled due to local opposition, leading to intense controversy.

[20] In 2019 the Lempertz auction house settled a claim related to the 1937 forced sale of Happy Family in Garden by Otto Heichert (1868–1946).