FNF’s art restitution team notches its second major recovery in two weeks, extending a two-decade record of recovering hundreds of Göring-looted works for the Goudstikker family
NEW YORK, Oct. 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Freedman Normand Friedland LLP (“FNF”) today announced another major victory for its longtime client Marei von Saher, sole heir of the celebrated Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. The Dutch National Art Collection will return Jan van Goyen’s Fishermen by the Lakeshore to Ms. von Saher more than eighty years after Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring, looted it from the Goudstikker gallery.
The van Goyen decision comes just two weeks after FNF, working with local counsel in Argentina, secured the first restitution of a Nazi-looted painting in Argentina’s history, also for Ms. von Saher.
In the van Goyen proceeding, the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science issued a decision to the return the painting to Ms. von Saher. The Minister fully adopted the recommendation of the Netherlands’ Restitutions Committee, which found that Göring’s June 1940 seizure of the van Goyen (one of more than 1,300 works in Goudstikker’s gallery when the Nazis invaded) fit the Nazi pattern of theft dressed up with a veneer of legality.
FNF’s team has represented Ms. von Saher at every stage, including the Dutch proceedings that returned more than 200 works to the family in 2006 and three more in 2013. The van Goyen is the third Dutch restitution to the family under the Washington Principles. FNF’s attorneys work alongside Amelia Keuning of Toussaint LLC.
“After more than eighty years, this painting is finally being restored to my family,” said Marei von Saher. “I am deeply grateful to the Restitutions Committee for its diligence, to the Minister for following its advice, and to my legal team who have stood with our family every step of the way and never stopped fighting for what is rightfully ours.”
The Argentine victory came on September 4, 2026, when a federal judge approved the return of Giacomo Ceruti’s Portrait of a Lady, looted by Göring and “sold” in 1944 to Friedrich Kadgien, an SS officer and Göring’s financial adviser, who later fled from Germany to Argentina. The painting surfaced last year in a real estate listing for the Mar del Plata home of Kadgien’s daughter. FNF’s Yaél M. Weitz moved immediately, engaging Argentine counsel and working with federal prosecutors to bring the painting home.
“I am hopeful that these historic restitutions will encourage others to act in a just and fair manner,” said Ms. Weitz, counsel for Ms. von Saher. “There are still tens of thousands of Nazi-looted artworks that need to be returned to their rightful owners. The von Saher family alone is still searching for hundreds of works from the Jacques Goudstikker’s collection.”
If you know about the location of one of these works, please contact FNF for assistance.
About Freedman Normand Friedland LLP
Freedman Normand Friedland LLP is a national litigation boutique with offices in New York, Miami, and Boston, handling complex commercial litigation, media relations, class actions, and other high-stakes disputes. Its art law practice, built on the 2024 acquisition of Kaye Spiegler PLLC, brings decades of experience recovering Nazi-looted art for Holocaust victims and their heirs and resolving cultural property and commercial art disputes.
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