Hope is the last to die, they say, and this is certainly true in the case of Charlotte Bischoff van Heemskerk, who although at 101 years of age[/B] was reunited with a painting that had special sentimental value to her.
The 1683 portrait by the Dutch painter Kaspar Netzer, whose works are in the National Gallery in London among other places, was hung in her father's house in Arnhem and was particularly loved by her father, Hendrik Schmidt van Helder, a doctor and director of the city's Children's Hospital, who was forced into hiding when he refused to take orders from the Nazis.
After Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, he kept the painting in a bank in Arnhem, believing it would be safe there.
But the Nazis broke into the vaults and took it away amid widespread looting and destruction.
In the chaos of war, the painting disappeared. But the Commission for Looted Art in Europe discovered that it had reappeared in a gallery in Düsseldorf in the 1950s.
In 1969 it was sold at auction in Amsterdam and in 1971 a private collector in Germany acquired the painting.
After negotiations with the latter, the painting was returned last year to Charlotte Bischoff van Heemskerk.
"I was amazed," she told the Guardian of the moment she saw the painting again.
"He would have been so happy to have it back," she said, referring to her father, who died in 1969.
After keeping the painting for six months, she decided to sell it at a Sotheby's auction to be held on July 6.
The auction house estimated the price at £30-50,000.
"I had five brothers and sisters. There are 20 offspring and they are very sweet, so I never felt like he was mine. It's family," she explained, while admitting she was moved by the painting as she was flooded with memories of the war.
[BR]
She recalled the SS going to the family home when her father went into hiding because "like many of his friends who had been arrested, he refused to follow German orders."
"My father was almost arrested... I opened the door when they came to find him. They were so furious... we had to leave at night, we took what we could," she described.
Later she joined the resistance, in the field of messaging.
"I'm sure you would have done the same. We hoped that we would win the war and we did everything we could to help," he said.
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