The Kunstmuseum Bern, the Swiss capital’s fine arts museum, has sold a painting by Édouard Manet from its controversial Gurlitt collection to Tokyo for $4 million (CHF4 million). The proceeds are intended to help get the museum out of the red. The French Impressionist’s 1873 painting, Marine, Temps d’orage (Stormy Sea), was most recently exhibited as a loan at the National Museum of Western Art (NMWA) in Tokyo. At the beginning of the 20th century, the painting belonged to a Japanese industrialist who lived in Paris. During his time in Europe, he built up a large art collection, including a whole series of masterpieces of French Impressionism with which he wanted to found a museum in Japan. For financial and political reasons he had to return to Japan and give up his project of founding a museum. He left about 400 works of art behind in Paris. When the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940, the collection was housed near Paris, where a retired Japanese naval officer represented the ...
