Guide to the Howard J. Trienens (1923-) Papers, 1986-1999 “Searle/Degas” Case
| Collection Title: | Howard J. Trienens (1923-) Papers, 1986-1999 “Searle/Degas” Case |
| Dates: | 1986-1999 |
| Bulk Dates: | 1986 |
| Identification: | 1/15 |
| Creator: | Trienens, Howard J. |
| Extent: | 21 Boxes |
| Language of Materials: | English |
| Abstract: | The Papers consist of the entire case file from the Searle/Degas legal proceedings–Nick Goodman, et al. v. Searle–which formed the basis for Trienens' book, Landscape with Smokestacks: the Case of the Allegedly Plundered Degas. Materials include correspondence, memoranda, depositions, produced documents, pleadings, research materials, and clippings. There is a certain amount of duplication of documents among the categories, since the same materials (exhibits, affidavits, etc.) were often used by both plaintiffs and defendant. General Correspondence files, spanning the years 1986-1999, are arranged in reverse chronological order (from most recent date to earliest date). These files include correspondence between the defendant and the members of his legal team, letters from the plaintiffs and their lawyers, and correspondence regarding documents, witnesses, and the day-to-day process of the legal action. Many items are photocopies of original letters, or include attached photocopied documents. The final folder contains details of the settlement of the case. Correspondence Subject Files, organized alphabetically by subject or name, contain correspondence and other documents concerning one person or entity. Five folders contain the attorneys' consultation with their counterparts in England, France, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland. Memoranda were generated by and addressed to members of the Sidley and Austin legal team as they worked on the Searle/Degas case. Subject Files and Memoranda are also arranged in reverse chronological order. |
| Acquisition Information: | The papers were donated to the University Archives by Howard J. Trienens on November 22, 2000, as Accession No. 00-304. |
| Processing Information: | Janet C. Olson, December 2000. |
| Separated Materials: | Twelve videocassettes of taped depositions and of related materials (including television interviews with the Goodmans and Lili Gutmann); one audiocasette; and a number of photographs were separated to the University Archives' audio-visual collection.Two books were transferred to the Northwestern University Art Library: Degas: the Complete Etchings, Lithographs and Monotypes (ed. Jean Adhémar and Françoise Cachin, London: Thames & Hudson, 1974) and Degas Monotypes: Essay, Catalogue & Checklist (Eugenia Parry Janis, Cambridge: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1968).One folder (Box 3, Folder 9) was returned to the donor.One cubic foot of duplicate materials was returned to the donor. |
| Conditions Governing Access: | None. |
| Repository: | Northwestern University Archives Deering Library, Room 110 1970 Campus Dr. Evanston, IL, 60208-2300 URL: http://www.library.northwestern.edu/archives Email: archives@northwestern.edu Phone: 847-491-3354 |
Biographical/Historical Information
Howard J. Trienens completed both his undergraduate and graduate education at Northwestern University, receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1945 and his J.D. in 1949. He served with the U.S. Air Force from 1943 to 1946. In 1949, he was admitted to the Illinois Bar and joined the law firm of Sidley, Austin, Burgess and Harper (Chicago). Trienens, an expert in public utility and railroad law, became a partner of Sidley & Austin in 1956. Trienens also served as U.S. General Counsel of AT&T (1980-86) and as director of the G. D. Searle Company and the R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company.
Trienens married Paula Miller, a 1947 graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, in 1946. Paula and Howard Trienens continued to be involved in Northwestern; she served as the president of the Alumnae of Northwestern, and he was elected vice president of the Northwestern Alumni Association in 1966 and has served as a Trustee of the University since his election to the Board of Trustees in 1967 (Chairman of the Board, 1986-1996).
The “Searle/Degas” case (Nick Goodman, et al. v. Daniel C. Searle), 1995-1999
This series documents legal proceedings involving a Degas monotype owned by one of Trienens' clients.
On the recommendation of curators at the Art Institute of Chicago, Searle, an art collector, purchased a Degas monotype entitled Landscape with Smokestacks (Paysage avec fumée de cheminées, 1890) in 1987 from the private collection of Emile Wolf, a New York collector. Wolf had bought the picture in 1951 from a Swiss art dealer. Both Wolf and Searle lent the picture to exhibits in various cities in the United States, and it had been included in exhibit catalogues and in volumes about Degas’ work.
In 1995, when Searle was considering selling the monotype, he was contacted by an attorney representing the heirs of Dutch art collector Friedrich Gutmann, who had purchased the picture in 1932 and who had died in a concentration camp in 1944. Gutmann’s heirs—daughter Lili Gutmann and grandsons Nick and Simon Goodman—believed that this picture, along with many other paintings and art objects belonging to Gutmann and his wife, had been confiscated by the Germans and sold illegally to the Swiss dealer from whom Wolf had acquired the picture in 1951. The heirs had spent many years searching for and reclaiming other works and objects from the Gutmann collection.
The plaintiffs argued that Searle should have known, or suspected, that this picture might have been among the thousands of Jewish-owned art objects confiscated and illegally sold during the German occupation of Holland and France. Although Searle and the curators believed the provenance of the picture to be clear and untarnished, the Gutmann heirs felt that the purchaser must have been aware that two of dealers listed on the provenance were accused of purveying confiscated art. Searle’s defense was based on the fact that it could not be proven that the picture in question had not been legally sold by Gutmann during his lifetime. There was evidence that Gutmann had sent some objects from his collection to his art dealer in Paris to sell, and that indeed certain items had been sold and Gutmann remunerated, although other Gutmann artworks had been confiscated by the Germans. The existing paperwork relating to the collection—letters from Gutmann to his children, bills of sale, records kept by art dealers and storage facilities (using false names to protect Jewish owners), inventories made by Germans and by a French curator/spy at the Jeu de Paume, where confiscated art was stored—though extensive, was subject to interpretation, and on the subject of the Landscape with Smokestacks it was inconclusive.
The defense also stressed the tardiness of the demand for the return of the picture. Because the work had been publicly displayed and cited in exhibit catalogues and studies of Degas since the 1960s, the heirs should have been able to trace it much earlier. The case was further complicated by issues of jurisdiction (Lili Gutmann was a Dutch citizen living in Italy; the Goodmans, British citizens, lived in California; Searle, an Illinois resident, had purchased the picture in New York; and Wolf had purchased it in Switzerland).
The complaint was filed in federal court in New York in 1996, and, at Sidley & Austin’s request, transferred later that year to the federal court in Chicago. The Goodman/Gutmanns also publicized the situation in interviews on radio and television and in the press. Although efforts were made by both sides to reach a settlement out of court, the case proceeded toward a trial.
An out-of-court settlement was finally reached in August, 1998: after assessments by two mutually-agreed upon appraisers, the parties would split ownership of the picture 50/50; Searle would donate his half to the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Goodman/Gutmanns would sell the museum their share for one-half of the appraised value. The appraisals eventually averaged $487,500; in May, 1999, the Goodman/Gutmann’s were duly paid $243,750 by the Art Institute, and Daniel Searle took a tax deduction in an equal amount. Landscape with Smokestacks, now owned solely by the Art Institute of Chicago, bears a label reading “Purchased from the collection of Friedrich and Louise Gutmann, and gift of Daniel C. Searle.”
The major figures involved in the case included several members of Sidley & Austin in addition to Trienens (Thomas Cauley, Susan Davies, Ralph Lerner, and Henry Mason); Nick and Simon Goodman and Lili Gutmann and their attorney, Thomas R. Kline of Andrews & Kurth, L.L.P.; and the Art Institute of Chicago and its legal counsel, Thaddeus Stauber of Eckhart, McSwain, Silliman & Sears. Other important participants included Margo Pollins Schab, the New York art dealer who had arranged the sale of the Degas to Searle; Suzanne McCullagh and Douglas Druick, curators, of the Art Institute of Chicago; expert witnesses for the Goodmans (Lynn Nicholas, Linda Pinkerton, and Arthur von Mehren), and Hermine Chivain-Cobb, art consultant to Sidley & Austin, who analyzed key documents and provided translations and interpretation.
For a description of the case from start to finish, see Howard J. Trienens, Landscape with Smokestacks: the Case of the Allegedly Plundered Degas (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2000); on the dispersal of artwork during German occupation and World War II, see Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994; reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1995).
Scope and Content
The Papers consist of the entire case file from the Searle/Degas legal proceedings–Nick Goodman, et al. v. Searle–which formed the basis for Trienens' book, Landscape with Smokestacks: the Case of the Allegedly Plundered Degas. Materials include correspondence, memoranda, depositions, produced documents, pleadings, research materials, and clippings. There is a certain amount of duplication of documents among the categories, since the same materials (exhibits, affidavits, etc.) were often used by both plaintiffs and defendant.
General Correspondence files, spanning the years 1986-1999, are arranged in reverse chronological order (from most recent date to earliest date). These files include correspondence between the defendant and the members of his legal team, letters from the plaintiffs and their lawyers, and correspondence regarding documents, witnesses, and the day-to-day process of the legal action. Many items are photocopies of original letters, or include attached photocopied documents. The final folder contains details of the settlement of the case. Correspondence Subject Files, organized alphabetically by subject or name, contain correspondence and other documents concerning one person or entity. Five folders contain the attorneys' consultation with their counterparts in England, France, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland. Memoranda were generated by and addressed to members of the Sidley and Austin legal team as they worked on the Searle/Degas case. Subject Files and Memoranda are also arranged in reverse chronological order.
Depositions consist of transcripts of the testimony of the defendant, the plaintiffs, and other parties involved, along with the exhibits and other relevant documents produced as evidence. Between March, 1997 and February, 1998, depositions were taken from art dealer Margo Pollins Schab, Chicago Art Insitute curators Suzanne McCullagh and Douglas Druick; from the expert witnesses; and from consultant Hermine Chivain-Cobb, as well as from Searle and the Goodmans/Gutmanns. Depositions are arranged in chronological order according to the date of the testimony. In some cases, condensed or compressed versions of the transcripts, along with indexes or concordances, accompany the depositions. Many of the exhibits included in the depositions were also brought in as produced documents and/or pleadings.
Produced documents comprise nearly three cubic feet of records. The bulk of the documents—over 5000 pages—was supplied by the plaintiffs; the index alone fills two folders (Box 10, folders 4-5). Each document page is numbered. The defendant's documents consist of DCS 1-1582; the plaintiffs' documents are numbered NSLG 1-5295. Documents include materials directly related to the artwork in question, dating back to letters from Friedrich Gutmann to his children, correspondence between the heirs and the various agencies established at the end of the war to value, locate, and return confiscated goods. Indirectly related materials include reports and interrogations by US and foreign governmental agencies, postwar, regarding known purveyors of stolen art. Many of the plaintiffs' documents are in foreign languages (mostly Dutch, French or German); folders containing translations of the important documents, supplied by translators for Sidley & Austin, are located after the last of the NSLG produced documents. In a number of cases, materials furnished as produced documents also appeared as exhibits to depositions and to pretrial pleadings.
Pretrial memoranda and drafts include proposed statements of uncontested and contested facts and jury instructions, prepared by Sidley & Austin. Pleadings presented at the pretrial conferences on August 5 and August 19, 1998, are arranged in numerical order (Pretrial I: Pleadings 1-89 and Pretrial II: Pleadings 1-40). The Pleadings consist of the legal documents—from the July 7, 1996 Summons to the August 19, 1998 Stipulation of Dismissal—submitted by either side during the course of the legal action. Documents include subpoenas, motions, interrogatories, orders, notices, requests for document production, responses, and statements. Indexes listing the documents submitted are located in Box 16 folder 6 and Box 19 folder 5, respectively. Many of these documents also exist as depositions or produced documents.
Clippings fall into two main categories: those covering the Searle case and the Goodmans/Gutmanns; and clippings regarding related cases or the topic of confiscated art in genera1. Clippings come from newspapers and from general and special-interest magazines published locally or elsewhere in the country. The folders of clippings related directly to the case also include transcripts of radio or television news announcements or interviews with the Goodmans. Many of the clippings are photocopies; all are identified as to their source and date. Clippings are arranged chronologically from earliest to most recent.
Subjects
Personal Name
Degas, Edgar,--1834-1917--Paysage avec fumé de cheminés
Searle, Daniel C.--Trials, litigation, etc.
Subjects
Art thefts--France--Paris--History--20th century
