Rothschild Family Treasures Find a Resting Place in Boston

As the granddaughter of the Baron and Baroness Alphonse and Clarice de Rothschild of the banking and collecting dynasty, Bettina Burr recalls being mesmerized by one of the couple’s storied paintings. The work, by the English portraitist George Romney, showed his muse, a coquettish young Emma Hart, the mistress of Lord Nelson, dressed in frills and wearing a jaunty hat. “I remember stopping and just staring,” Ms. Burr said. “She has so much allure, you couldn’t help but ogle her.”

The painting, confiscated by the Nazis in 1938 along with some 3,500 other treasures from the family’s palaces, was discovered in Austria’s salt mines by Allied forces after the war. Returned to the Rothschild family in 1947, it is among 186 pieces of jewelry, jeweled boxes, furniture, prints, drawings, miniatures, paintings and rare books that Ms. Burr and other family members are now donating to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. About 80 of the items will go on view at the museum on Sunday in “Restoring a Legacy: Rothschild Family Treasures,” which will recount how the objects were collected, looted and finally recovered by the Austrian wing of the family.

“Many have descriptions like ‘picture of a cow in a landscape,’ ” she said, “and they are impossible to find.”

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The New York Times