# Bild mit Haeusern (Painting with Houses) > Wassily Kandinsky - 1909 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/wassily-kandinsky/kandinsky-bild-mit-hausern/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-10 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Wassily Kandinsky - **Date:** 1909 - **Medium:** Oil on canvas - **Dimensions:** 97 x 132 cm - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Russian and German, twentieth century - **Current location:** Private collection. Sold to a private collector in 2023 through a major auction house. Not on public view. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary Bought by an Amsterdam sewing-machine manufacturer in 1923 for 500 guilders, sold anonymously at a Dutch auction house five months into the German occupation, and knocked down to the director of the Stedelijk Museum for 160 guilders plus a ten per cent premium. It hung in the museum for eighty-one years. In October 2018 the Dutch Restitutions Committee issued a binding opinion refusing to return it, holding that the museum's interest in the painting outweighed the claimants', who it found had no strong personal connection to it. The opinion caused a national row, a government review and the abolition of the test it had applied.The painting was returned anyway, in February 2022, by a vote of Amsterdam city council rather than by any panel, and without waiting for the committee to look again. In 2023 it sold privately for more than sixty million euros, the most valuable object the Netherlands has ever restituted. This is the record that shows what happens when the machinery a country builds produces an answer the country will not stand behind. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1909** Wassily Kandinsky `[documented]` (origin) Painted in 1909, in the Murnau years, and dated on the canvas. - **-1923** Paul Citroen, Amsterdam dealer `[documented]` (trade) Citroen was the source of much of the Lewenstein modern collection. How and when he acquired this canvas is not established in the sources consulted. - **1923-1930** Emanuel Albert Lewenstein, Amsterdam `[documented]` (purchase) Bought from Paul Citroen in May 1923 for 500 guilders. Lewenstein, 1870 to 1930, directed the family sewing-machine business and collected modern art. - **1930-1937** Hedwig Lewenstein-Weijermann, his widow `[documented]` (inheritance) Her will of 1 February 1937 directed that the paintings and etchings be divided by an expert into two equal portions and assigned to the two children by lot. She died on 25 May 1937. - **1938-1940** Robert Lewenstein, and on the committee's finding Irma Klein `[documented]` (division of the estate) By a deed of division of 24 January 1938 the movable property including the pictures went to Robert Lewenstein, offsetting a debt of 16,250 guilders owed by his sister to their mother. Because he had married Irma Klein in community of property on 11 October 1933, and by operation of a retroactive division deed of 10 June 1947, the Restitutions Committee found that Irma Klein became sole owner of this painting by the time their legal separation became final on 27 September 1940. Robert Lewenstein fled to the United States in June 1940. - **1940-2022** City of Amsterdam, on display at the Stedelijk Museum `[disputed]` (sale under occupation) Lot 205, Frederik Muller and Company, Amsterdam, 9 October 1940, five months into the German occupation, consigned anonymously as the estate of L. Bought by the museum's director Jonkheer D. C. Roell for the City of Amsterdam at 160 guilders hammer, 176 guilders with the ten per cent premium, against the 500 guilders the collector had paid in 1923. The Restitutions Committee held in 2018 that the sale could not be considered in isolation from the Nazi regime but was also in part a consequence of financial circumstances that predated the invasion, that the owners had probably cooperated, and that no Nazi confiscation was established. The claimants contended the loss was involuntary. The disagreement was never resolved by any tribunal. - **2022-2023** Heirs of Emanuel Lewenstein and of Irma Klein `[documented]` (return by the owner, not by a panel decision) Amsterdam city council and the mayor announced in the summer of 2021 that the painting would be returned without waiting for the Restitutions Committee's reconsideration under the revised 2021 framework. The transfer took place in February 2022, nine years after the claim was lodged. The binding opinion of 22 October 2018 refusing return was not annulled; it was overtaken. - **2023-present** Private collector `[documented]` (private sale) Sold to a private collector for more than sixty million euros through a major auction house, in a private transaction rather than a public sale. The most valuable object the Netherlands has restituted. Proceeds divided between two American grandchildren of Emanuel Lewenstein, the three Dutch children of Elsa Guidotti, and Mondex Corporation, the Canadian recovery firm that worked the claim. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1940-10-09** Frederik Muller and Company, Amsterdam, Estate of L. (the Lewenstein collection, consigned anonymously), lot 205 - Estimate: Not published in the sources consulted - Hammer: NLG 160 - With premium: NLG 176 including the ten per cent buyer's premium - Bought by Jonkheer D. C. Roell, director of the Stedelijk Museum, on behalf of the City of Amsterdam, five months into the German occupation. The collector had paid 500 guilders for the same painting in 1923. The hammer and the premium-inclusive figure are separately recorded in the Restitutions Committee's binding opinion, which is unusually precise for a 1940 sale and is the reason this row can be split at all. - **** , - The 2023 disposal was a PRIVATE SALE through a major auction house and not a public auction. The reported consideration is more than sixty million euros. No hammer, premium, estimate, lot number or buyer has been published, and none should be inferred. Reports of a single figure in a private treaty sale describe a total consideration, not a hammer price. ## Exhibitions - Permanent collection, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1940-2022 ## Open questions - Who instructed Frederik Muller and Company to sell the Lewenstein collection in October 1940, and on what terms? Both of Emanuel Lewenstein's children had left the country before the sale, and the consignment was catalogued anonymously as the estate of L. - What else was in the collection? The 1940 catalogue is the closest thing to an inventory that survives, and it was produced by the sale that broke the collection up. - Who bought the painting in 2023, and was the reported figure of more than sixty million euros the whole consideration? No hammer, premium or contract terms have been published, and the sale was private. - What share of the proceeds went to Mondex Corporation? The firm's participation is on the public record; the commercial terms of it are not. - Was the Restitutions Committee's binding opinion of 22 October 2018 ever formally set aside, or does it stand as the only panel decision on this object? Nothing in the published record shows it annulled; the painting was returned by a decision of the owner instead. ## Sources - [1] Restitutiecommissie (Dutch Restitutions Committee), binding opinion RC 3.141, 'Painting with Houses by Wassily Kandinsky', 22 October 2018: the family history, the deeds of 1937, 1938 and 1947, the 9 October 1940 Frederik Muller sale, lot 205, the 160 and 176 guilder figures, the balance of interests and the rejection of the claim. PRIMARY. - [2] Restitutiecommissie, news item announcing the binding opinion, 1 November 2018, recording that the city council is not obliged to restitute the work and the grounds relied on. PRIMARY. - [3] NL Times, 'Kandinsky painting Amsterdam museum returned to Jewish family sold for EUR 60 mil.', 23 February 2023, reporting NRC: the private sale for more than sixty million euros through a large auction house, the division of proceeds between the Lewenstein grandchildren, the children of Elsa Guidotti and Mondex, the 2021 council decision and the February 2022 return, and the committee's finding that the heirs had no emotional or intense connection with the painting. - [4] Judd Tully, 'Sotheby's London Sells a $44.7 Million Restituted Kandinsky', 9 March 2023, for the sale of Murnau mit Kirche II on 1 March 2023 at GBP 37,196,800 / USD 44,766,880, the Stern heirs and the Van Abbemuseum restitution. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Emanuel Lewenstein', TERTIARY, used for the 1923 purchase from Paul Citroen at 500 guilders, the scope of the collection, the 8-9 October 1940 auction as 'Estate L.', the December 2020 Striving for Justice report, the March 2021 revised assessment framework, the August 2021 council vote and the February 2022 transfer. Flagged for replacement with the Amsterdam city council resolution and the Kohnstamm report itself. - [6] Wikipedia, 'Hedwig Lewenstein', TERTIARY, used for the 1933 loan of Das bunte Leben to the Stedelijk and the June 2023 German Advisory Commission recommendation. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Das Bunte Leben', TERTIARY, used for that painting's dimensions, the Slijper purchase and concealment, the Bayerische Landesbank and Lenbachhaus, the March 2017 New York suit and the June 2023 German finding. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Wassily Kandinsky', TERTIARY, used only for the biography: the Moscow law career, the 1896 move to Munich, the 1909 founding of the Neue Kuenstlervereinigung and the Theosophical Society membership, Ueber das Geistige in der Kunst, Der Blaue Reiter, the Russian years, the Bauhaus, the degenerate art campaign and the destruction of Composition I. Flagged for replacement with Hans Konrad Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin's catalogue raisonne. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.