Nazi-stolen artwork recovered by FBI in New Orleans, returned to original family

A Jewish family was reunited with a Monet painting stolen by the Nazis after it was found in a Houston art gallery by the New Orleans office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Adalbert Parlagi, his wife, Hilda Hock, and their two children fled Vienna, Austria, leaving all their possessions behind, in March 1938. Parlagi did not recover his paintings. They had been plundered and sold by the Gestapo to fund the war efforts. The "Bord de Mer" by Claude Monet resurfaced 83-years-later at M.S. Rau antique store in New Orleans.

Since that time it was sold to a Louisiana couple who later attempted to sell it in a Houston art gallery in 2023. This flagged the FBI, who intervened, and the painting has remained at the New Orleans FBI branch. On Wednesday, Oct. 10, the Louisiana family gifted the painting to Parlagi’s descendants.

Agents lifted the blue veil, showing it to Parlagi's descendants.

“I can’t believe what is happening… I am overwhelmed by what is happening,” Francoise Parlagi said. She said English isn’t her native language, but she was close with her grandfather and, “he would have never thought this would be happening.”

When her grandfather passed away a decade ago, she found documents relating to the painting and began searching without much hope. She said being reunited with the painting felt “unreal.”

The painting is a small pastel, or chalk painting, 17.8 by 27.9 centimeters, of a tranquil Normandy Coast, near Saint Addresse. In the bottom right is Monet’s signature. It was painted in 1865 and purchased by Parlagi’s family from an Austrian art auction in 1936. The family fled in 1938, and according to the FBI, the painting was seized by the Nazis in 1940. It was sold a year later to auctioneer Adolf Weinmuller, who, according to officials, knew the artwork was stolen and worked closely with the Nazi government.

“It was not a secret that he was purchasing art that was stolen from a Jewish family,” Special Agent Christopher McKeogh said. “That purchase took place anyway.”

McKeogh, along with retired Special Agent Randolph Deaton, and New York Police Department’s Rigel Zeledou investigated the case. Officials say it is unknown exactly how the artwork traveled from Germany to Louisiana, but a multinational investigation has brought one of the six paintings back to the family.

The FBI was contacted in 2021 to search for the painting, and its listing in a Houston art gallery in 2023 prompted them to contact the owners: Kevin Schlamp and Bridget Vita-Schlamp. Kevin Schlamp has since passed away.

According to First Assistant United States Attorney Michael Simpson, the Sulphur, Texas, family instantly wanted to help return it the Palargis. Attorneys from the Eastern District of New Orleans have since restored legal ownership to the Palargis.

Vita-Schlamp said their dealer had placed an image of the painting on the front page of his catalogue, and the FBI contacted him. According to Vita-Schlamp, they are not being reimbursed for the painting.

"It was the lead seller of the art," she said. The FBI contacted the two through email and told them it was stolen. "It was just shock, but again, we were very clear that it needed to go back to the rightful heirs," she said.

The Commission for Looted Art was contacted by Francoise Parlagi to help search for the missing paintings in 2014. According to Co-Chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe Anne Webber, the painting’s first public appearance was in a small museum in Eastern France in 2016. The New Orleans dealer, M.S. Rau, had obtained it in 2017 from a Parisian Gallery that lent it to the museum. It later sold the painting to Vita-Schlamp and her late husband.

Webber said this artwork and its return to the family is important, and the FBI’s work has undone a historical injustice.

“The meaning of their restitution of this artwork can never be underestimated," Webber said. "The families were systematically and deliberately deprived of their identities: their professional identity, their cultural identity, their social identity, and if Hitler had his way their human identity.”

She said Monet wasn’t famous back then, and the painting’s value to Parlagi reflected his sensibilities.

“Monet was not so well known in the 1930s — not as sought after as today — and this painting tells us a lot about Adalbert Parlagi: his taste, his eye, his understanding of culture in the widest sense and his sense of belonging to a humane and civilized society,” she said.

And learning more about her grandfather is exactly what Helen Lowe said she wanted. She said she wasn’t close to her grandfather, and her mother, Hedwig, rarely spoke about what was lost. Instead, her mother talked about how thankful she was that they survived. Two of her other ancestors were not as lucky.

Lowe said she’s recently been learning about artwork, and it’s been a way to reconnect with her grandfather.

“What a beautiful way to reconnect with him as a man through this work of art,” she said. “It’s just something very touching for me.”

The FBI are also seeking the public’s help to locate a second painting from Palargi’s collection, “Seine in Paris,” by Paul Signac. The FBI has a publicly accessible database of stolen artwork, and the Seine in Paris can be viewed here: https://artcrimes.fbi.gov/nsaf/sein-in-paris-pont-alexandre/art-view?cfs=true . To provide any information on the painting, readers may contact the FBI at NYArtCrime@fbi.gov .

This article originally appeared on The Courier: Nazi-stolen artwork recovered by FBI in New Orleans, returned to original family