Starting Friday, November 21, 2025, the Dieppe Museum will present a prestigious work by Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley titled "The Seine at Bougival." The painting will be displayed to the public while authorities continue searching for its rightful owners, as it remains one of thousands of artworks looted during World War II.
The artwork will join the Impressionist collections at the Dieppe Museum in Seine-Maritime, France, as part of an ongoing collaboration between the city, the Dieppe Museum, the Musée d'Orsay, and the French Ministry of Culture. "The Seine at Bougival will be exhibited to the public starting November 21," confirmed Pierre Ickowicz, the museum's curator, and Pauline Le Jossic, the assistant director.
The subject of this work is the Seine River, which "embodies, by itself, the geographical and artistic itinerary that connects the Île-de-France to Normandy through a pictorial movement of international renown: Impressionism," museum officials explained. However, the Dieppe Museum is only hosting this work temporarily, as it has been catalogued as "Musées nationaux de récupération number 208."
This designation means the painting is among the artworks looted during World War II and is awaiting restitution to its legitimate owners. The work was recovered in Germany after the war and was initially attributed to the Louvre, then to the Galerie du Jeu de Paume, before being conserved at the Musée d'Orsay since 1986.
The term "Musées nationaux récupération" (MNR) was established in the 1950s to designate 2,200 works recovered in Germany and returned to France. These works, primarily looted from Jewish families, are entrusted to the care of national museums. The museums have placed some of these works on deposit in regional museums so they can be presented to the public while awaiting identification of their rightful owners.
Since MNR works do not belong to national collections, they can be returned to the heirs of those who were looted without legislative procedures, the museum explained. Since 1950, 200 works have been successfully restituted to their rightful owners or heirs.
The Dieppe Museum has previously participated in restitution efforts on two occasions. In 2022 and 2024, the museum returned two other looted works: "Storm at Sea," a 17th-century Dutch painting, and "The Barges," another canvas painted by Alfred Sisley in 1870. Referenced as MNR 645 and MNR 206 respectively, the first work is still in the process of being returned to its rightful heirs.
"The City and the Dieppe Museum continue their close collaboration with the Musée d'Orsay and the Ministry of Culture as part of this essential process of repairing History," the museum concluded. The exhibition provides an opportunity for the public to view this significant Impressionist work while contributing to ongoing efforts to locate and return Nazi-looted art to its rightful owners.
