Charles - François Hutin (1715-1776)
Woman in an armchair
Oil, canvas 77 x 55,5 cm.

The painting which originally had been part of an art collection of Franciszek Potocki and his wife Malgorzata Potocka neé Radziwill, was deposited in the National Museum in Warsaw in 1939 and registered in its inventary book under No. 182201.

At the beginning of the German occupation the painting was selected by the Nazis for removal to the Reich. It was then listed in the catalogue Sichergestellte Kunstwerke im Generalgouvernement , published in Breslau in 1940 (among more than 500 works of art from public and private collections in the "General Government" - i.e. occupied Poland - intended for a museum in Linz being intended by Hitler). Finally the picture was confiscated by the German authorities in 1944 which a official confirmation of "sheltering and taking over" issued.

After 1945 the painting could not be found during a restitution search in the Germany´s occupation zones and therefore was listed in the Catalogue of paintings removed from Poland by the German occupiers in the years 1939-1945 " compiled by Wladyslaw Tomkiewicz in 1949.

In 2000 the painting was still considered lost and was published again in an updated catalogue of Polish war losses compiled by Maria Romanowska-Zadrozna and Tadeusz Zadrozny - Wartime Losses. Foreign Painting. Volume I. (Warsaw 2000).

The picture surfaced in December 2003 in one of auction houses in Paris . It was then recovered as a result of negotiations between Jan Potocki (the successor of Franciszek and Malgorzata Potocki) and the Art Loss Register in London .

According to a Jan Potocki´s wish, the painting will be deposited in the National Museum in Warsaw - the place from where it was looted 50 years ago - after its conservation work is completed.