Missing Japanese-collected Monet painting found at the Louvre

February 27, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's National Museum of Western Art has said that Impressionist master Claude Monet's "Water Lilies: Reflections of a Willow Tree," a long-lost oil painting that had belonged to the so-called Matsukata collection, the main feature of the museum, was discovered at France's Louvre Museum.

According to the NMWA, the painting, which became unaccounted for after World War II, was found rolled up and severely damaged at the Louvre in September 2016 and handed over to the Japanese museum.

The piece, whose original size is estimated to be 2 meters wide and 4.25 meters long, has been identified as a study related to part of Monet's "Water Lilies," a series of large paintings, from the "1916" indication along the painter's signature and records about the famous series, now in the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris, the national museum said.

As about half of the painting was gone, the museum plans to start restoring the remaining half in April so it can exhibit the restored work in June next year.

"The piece should be an important material for further Monet research," sad Akiko Mabuchi, director-general of the NMWA.

The museum, located in Tokyo's Taito Ward, features Japanese businessman Kojiro Matsukata's collection of Impressionist paintings and Auguste Rodin's sculptures he acquired in Europe in the 1910s and 1920s. The French government took some 400 pieces out of the collection in the closing days of the war and returned 357 of them to Japan in 1959. The recently found Monet painting was neither included in the returned items nor kept by the government. Jiji Press