A painting by the German Impressionist painter Max Slevogt, which has been restituted to the heirs of Eduard Fuchs—a collector, Communist and writer who fled Nazi Germany with his Jewish wife—will be auctioned next month. Slevogt's Paradiesvögel (Birds of Paradise, 1900), was acquired by the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal, western Germany, in 2006 and following an investigation that began in 2020 was approved for restitution by the Wuppertal city council on 13 July 2026. Paradiesvögel will be offered at Ketterer Kunst's 5 December Day Sale with an estimate of €40,000–€60,000.
Given the large number of heirs a sale was the only option, Ketterer Kunst's head of communications Anja Häse tells The Art Newspaper. The heirs consigned the painting once the restitution was completed, she adds. Another work by Slevogt from Fuchs’s collection, Don Quichotte und die Schafherde (Don Quixote and the Flock of Sheep, 1907) is also included in the auction with an estimate of €20,000–€30,000. According to Ketterer Kunst's provenance information, a settlement was reached between the current private owners and Fuchs's heirs in 2026, allowing the work to be offered at auction free of restitution claims. The terms of the “amicable restitution” have not been disclosed.
Max Slevogt's Don Quichotte und die Schafherde (Don Quixote and the Flock of Sheep, 1907) © Ketterer Kunst
Fuchs's collection was confiscated by the Nazis but later released. In 1937, he was forced to sell works from the collection to pay a punitive emigration tax imposed by the Nazi authorities. Paradiesvögel was auctioned in Berlin in June 1937 and acquired by the art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, passing to Fritz Slevogt in 1939.
Paradiesvögel was included in a sale at Kunsthaus Lempertz in December 2004, estimated at €100,000-€120,000, but went unsold. According to Meyer, the work remained in the auction house’s custody afterwards and was subsequently exhibited at the Von der Heydt-Museum in 2005. The museum then purchased the painting through the auction house in 2006 for €120,000. Meyer says that while the painting's provenance was documented in the 2004 auction catalogue, the museum can no longer establish whether a provenance check was carried out before the acquisition or how thoroughly it was assessed. She also confirmed that the museum is not considering any legal action against Kunsthaus Lempertz regarding due diligence on the painting.
The provenance investigation began after Fuchs's heirs contacted the institution in 2020, the museum's press officer Marion Meyer tells The Art Newspaper. The research drew on a wider project, supported by the German Lost Art Foundation, to reconstruct Eduard and Margarete Fuchs's collection.
“Restituting Max Slevogt's Paradiesvögel means losing a painting, but we gain something far more important: the certainty that we have acted responsibly towards history,” the Von der Heydt-Museum's director Roland Mönig says in a press statement. He describes provenance research as “an essential part of our work”.
In 2024, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart restituted Slevogt's Der verlorene Sohn (The Prodigal Son, 1899) to Fuchs's heirs. The triptych was sold at Ketterer Kunst later that year.
