Fort Worth museum pays $5.7 to reacquire painting in WWII restitution case

Glaucus and Scylla, a 1841 oil on wood by J.M.W. Turner that the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth returned to the heirs of British collectors John and Anna Jaffé last summer, is back at the Kimbell —- which paid $5.7 million for it at auction.

The painting had been in the Kimbell's collection for 40 years until Alain Monteagle, a Jaffé descendant, proved it had been unlawfully seized by France's pro-Nazi Vichy government in 1943.

The gold and russet Turner shows a lovestruck sea god, Glaucus, pursuing Scylla, an ocean nymph. It dates from the last decade of the English artist's life, when he was experimenting with different formats. It sold several times before its original acquisition by the Fort Worth museum in 1966.