Musées Nationaux Récupération

Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR) is the French state body that looks after the looted artworks recovered from Nazi Germany and brought back to France after the Second World War. Of some 61,000 works returned to the country, around 2,143 are still in its custody. The ficha does not give its city, but its job is clear: to trace the rightful owners of the pieces and return them where possible. Much of the collection sits in the Louvre, the Orsay Museum, the National Museum of Modern Art and other museums across France. The acronym MNR covers all these works and also prefixes the inventory numbers of the older paintings held by the Louvre's Department of Paintings. Looting targeted Jewish collectors in every country under German occupation; in France it was carried out by organisations such as the E.R.R. and M-Aktion, as well as by the occupation authorities. The web's selection includes two paintings each by Alfred Sisley, Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Eugène Delacroix, along with single works by Théodore Géricault, Andrea Solari, Michiel Sweerts, Neroccio de' Landi, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac and Lucas Cranach el Viejo. Titles include Annunciation by Andrea Solari and Saint Paul by Lucas Cranach el Viejo. In 2017 the Louvre gave two new rooms to 31 paintings of this provenance.