# Mauritshuis to return Jan van Goyen landscape to Goudstikker heirs Canonical article: https://arthistory.news/news/mauritshuis-restitutes-jan-van-goyen-painting By ArtHistory.News Published: 2026-10-07T06:21:17.938Z Research with the heirs’ team linked the 1651 painting to Jacques Goudstikker’s trading stock. The Restitutions Committee found that its wartime loss was involuntary. The Mauritshuis in The Hague will return Jan van Goyen’s ‘Fishermen by the Lakeshore’ \(1651\) to the heirs of the Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. The Dutch culture minister accepted advice from the Restitutions Committee, and the work is to be restituted to Marei von Saher, widow of Goudstikker’s only son, Eduard. The museum says its recent provenance research, undertaken in close collaboration with the heirs’ research team, established that the landscape came from Goudstikker’s trading stock. Identifying it was not straightforward because Van Goyen was highly productive and painted many landscapes in comparable formats, the Mauritshuis says. The museum acquired the picture through the art trade in 1967, and it had not been identified in earlier restitution proceedings concerning Goudstikker’s collection. Goudstikker died in May 1940 while fleeing the Netherlands by ship for England. During the German occupation, his dealership and its inventory were taken over without the consent of his widow, Desirée Goudstikker, the business’s principal shareholder. Works from the stock were sent to Germany, including paintings that entered Hermann Göring’s collection. The Restitutions Committee found that the loss of the Van Goyen was involuntary. As reported by The Art Newspaper, it cited the widow’s lack of consent, the appointment of a managing director sympathetic to the German purchaser, and evidence that artworks had been transported to Germany before formal purchase agreements were signed. Judith Niessen, the Mauritshuis’s head of collection and research, told The Art Newspaper that the museum had bought the painting in good faith in the 1960s but that ‘it doesn’t belong to us: it left the Goudstikker collection in an unjust way’. The Art Newspaper reports that the Mauritshuis paid 58,000 guilders for the painting in 1967. Neither the museum’s account nor The Art Newspaper identifies the seller or documents its ownership history between the wartime transfer and the museum’s purchase. ## Illustrations Jan van Goyen, Fishermen by the Lakeshore \(1651\) Courtesy of the Mauritshuis [Image source](). ## Sources - [CODART: CODART]() - [The Art Newspaper: Mauritshuis to restitute 17th-century Dutch painting after research reveals it belonged to renowned Jewish dealer]() - [Mauritshuis: Ongoing Research]() - [Mauritshuis: Vervolgonderzoek]() ## Related records - [Jan van Goyen]() Please cite the canonical article URL above. Image credits and reproduction rights remain with their respective holders.