Culture ministry seeks to seize Wyspiański portrait despite losing court battle

Poland’s Culture Ministry continues to list a valuable Stanisław Wyspiański pastel as a lost artwork even after a court ruled that it belongs to its current holder, identified as P.C. The ministry had tried to establish that the work belonged to the Polish state, but the court rejected the claim.

The pastel, Portrait of Irena and Ludwik Solski, dates from 1904 and measures 48 by 63 centimeters. Its estimated value is 100,000 złoty. The ministry’s register says the work has not been recovered, a designation that indicates it is still being sought.

Last week, the Warsaw Regional Court issued a final decision recognizing P.C.’s acquisitive prescription of the pastel. P.C. has possessed the work since 1994, when he inherited an apartment and its contents from his aunt. Her husband, a prominent Warsaw surgeon, had collected art. The pastel had hung on the apartment wall for as long as P.C. could remember.

P.C. learned in 2019 that the work appeared on the ministry’s online list of wartime losses after watching a program about missing Polish artworks. He and his wife contacted the ministry and brought the pastel to a meeting. They were told that serious questions surrounded its ownership and warned that any attempt to sell it would be reported to prosecutors, according to their lawyer, Maciej Obrębski.

P.C.’s lawyer asked the ministry in February 2020 to remove the pastel from the register because P.C. wanted to sell it. The ministry refused, prompting the court application. It remains unclear who entered the work into the ministry’s register. Ministry spokesman Piotr Jędrzejowski said entries can draw on archival holdings and publicly available publications, as well as information supplied by private individuals, public institutions, religious organizations and government offices.

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Until 2019, P.C. believed that he had acquired the pastel through inheritance, especially since, for as long as he could remember, the picture had hung on the wall of the apartment.