The work, titled Lato (Summer), was handed over to the National Museum in the southwestern city of Wrocław after being recovered from a Danish auction house where it was due to be sold, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage said.
"This painting by Bertha Wegmann, a suffragist and one of the leading artists of her time, returns to Wrocław after many years," Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska told reporters.
"We don’t know the full story of its disappearance, but it is now back home and will remain permanently in the Wrocław National Museum," she added.
Wegmann (1847-1926), considered one of Denmark’s finest genre painters, created Lato in the early 20th century during a visit to what is now Poland's southeastern Lower Silesia region, reporters were told.
The painting was purchased in 1906 by the Silesian Art Society and later entered the collection of the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław.
Before World War II, it was loaned to a local girls’ school and subsequently disappeared during the conflict.
Cienkowska said the painting was looted during the war and entered private hands under unknown circumstances.
“Our team identified it after it appeared at an auction. Thanks to careful provenance research and the goodwill of the owners, we were able to recover it,” she said.
The work had surfaced several times on the art market in Britain, Israel and Denmark but remained unrecognised because no wartime photograph survived, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Museum staff, however, matched its description from a prewar catalogue. It was definitively identified last year when it was listed for sale by Danish auction house Bruun Rasmussen, bearing a Polish-language label on the reverse.
Once presented with documentation confirming the painting’s origin, the auction house contacted the Danish family that owned it.
After learning of its history, the siblings who had inherited the work decided to return it voluntarily to Wrocław, officials told reporters.
“I am deeply grateful to the family for their decision,” Cienkowska said. “Thankfully, such gestures are becoming more common. This is about restoring historical justice."
Her ministry stressed that Lato was returned as a donation, not a purchase.
Poland’s culture ministry says it has completed 20 restitution cases, recovering 23 cultural artifacts, this year alone.
Nearly 200 restitution proceedings are currently underway in 18 countries, according to officials.
Since 2008, Poland has recovered 805 cultural items lost during World War II, the PAP news agency reported.
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Source: PAP