The Glanville Family

In 1999 the Glanville family approached the Commission for Looted Art in Europe for assistance in recovering a triptych looted from their home in Vienna when the family fled the Nazis in 1938. Marietta Glanville described the looted painting as "an icon of my childhood." Her mother, Elizabeth Glanville, had searched for the looted von Kalckreuth painting since 1948. In 1971 she learned that the picture was in the Bavarian State Paintings Collection, Munich, acquired from a private collector in 1942. But in the same year, her claim was ruled out of time by the Bavarian Compensation Office on the grounds that the deadlines for restitution had expired in 1948. In 1983 Elizabeth Glanville died.

Ernest and Marietta Glanville pictured next to the recovered "Three stages of life" by Count Leopold von Kalckreuth, 2000.

In 1999, when the family asked the Commission for help, they swiftly established that the work was in the possession of the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. After some months of historical and archival research, which provided irrefutable grounds for restitution, the Commission was able to submit a claim to the Bavarian authorities in December 1999. By March 2000, only ten weeks later, the Commission was informed that the painting would be returned to the family.

At a ceremony in London on March 13, 2000, Dr Reinhold Baumstark, Director General of the Bavarian State Paintings Collection, formally handed the picture back, saying: "We are very pleased to give the painting back and to do a little bit of justice after the injustice of all these years."