Austria returns Munch painting ‘Summer Night’

Austria on Wednesday returned a painting by Edvard Munch, called “Summer Night on the Beach,” to the granddaughter of the composer Gustav Mahler, ending a 60-year legal battle.

The painting, which has hung in Vienna’s Belvedere museum since 1940, was handed to Marina Fistoulari-Mahler in Vienna, the museum said in a statement. Fistoulari-Mahler, who lives in Italy, “hasn’t yet said what she plans to do with the painting,” a museum spokeswoman said.

The Munch seascape was given to Alma Mahler-Werfel by her second husband, the architect Walter Gropius. Mahler-Werfel, who was married to Mahler before she became Gropius’ wife, lent the Munch and four other works to the Belvedere, then called the Oesterreichische Galerie, in 1937. She left it behind when she fled Austria the day after Hitler annexed the country in 1938.