. . . "Samuel had bought the painting in 1971 from a London dealer, Edward Speelman, who had acquired it four years earlier from an American investment banker and diplomat, J William Middendorf, who at one time served as the US ambassador to the Netherlands. Middendorf, in turn, had bought the painting in 1965 from a Swiss gallery, Galerie Kurt Meissner in Zurich. But there the trail went cold.Switzerland was a notorious clearing house for stolen art"@en .