The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has settled a long-running dispute with the estate of a Jewish collector whose house contents was sold by the Graupe Auction House in Berlin in 1937.
Under the terms of the agreement, the museum will pay the estate of Emma Budge an undisclosed sum to retain the seven commedia dell’arte figures by the Höchst, Fürstenberg and Fulda factories. It was deemed extremely unlikely that her heirs had ever received the proceeds of their sale in 1937 after the estate’s account at the MM Warburg bank in Hamburg was “aryanized”.
The figures, which help to complete the two only known complete sets of the commedia dell’arte models by Höchst and Fürstenberg, were first bequeathed to the museum in 2006 as part of a larger gift from Edward and Kiyi Pflueger. The Pfluegers had acquired the figures from the collection of Otto and Magdalena Blohm, who purchased them at the Graupe Auction House.