A Cézanne watercolor, *La Montagne Sainte Victoire* (ca. 1888), recently exhibited at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, may have been lost by its Jewish owner due to Nazi persecution. Provenance researcher Willi Korte, working for the owner's heir, uncovered documents showing that Gustav Schweitzer, a Jewish businessman who fled Berlin in 1935, loaned the work to a 1936 exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel. After the exhibition, Schweitzer asked the museum to safeguard the watercolor and help find a buyer; it was returned to his secretary in Paris in 1939, after which its whereabouts became unclear. The Fondation Beyeler stated it would inform the lender but return the work, citing a lack of legal authority to retain it.
This case matters because it highlights ongoing challenges in Nazi-era provenance research, particularly in Switzerland, where museums face legal limitations in handling restitution claims for loaned works. The dispute follows scrutiny of the Emil Bührle Collection at the Kunsthaus Zurich, where a Van Gogh once owned by Schweitzer was also found to have a possible persecution-related loss. Historian Georg Kreis noted that the watercolor would be difficult to sell under a "heavy cloud of suspicion," and urged the Fondation Beyeler to mediate a fair solution that compensates Schweitzer's descendants. The case underscores the moral and legal complexities surrounding art lost during the Nazi era.