Vision Foundation auctions Nazi-seized painting for €240,000

A painting seized for Hitler’s planned Führermuseum has sold at auction for €240,000 at the Dorotheum in Vienna with proceeds of the sale going to the Vision Foundation.

The previous owner left the painting of The Compassionate Child (The Beggar) by 19^th century Austrian artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller to the charity when they died.

In 1938, Irma and Oscar Löwenstein, who were prominent members of Vienna’s Jewish community, escaped Nazi oppression to London but could not take their art collection.

When Irma died in 1976, she left her estate to the Greater London Fund for the Blind, now the Vision Foundation but her art collection remained unaccounted for.