In 1940, he hastily left it all behind - including about 1400 works of prized art.
Goudstikker, who was Jewish, was forced to flee Amsterdam with his wife and young son just ahead of the Nazi invasion in May. He died after falling through a trapdoor on an outbound ship.
Now the collection is on display for the first time, an exhibition that tells the tragic story of Goudstikker, and the successful fight by his heirs to win back the paintings. The exhibition at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, "Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker," features about 40 of the finest paintings from his collection. It runs until September 7.
"This is a kind of time capsule," said Peter Sutton, the museum's executive director. "He broadened their tastes."
After the Nazis invaded, around 800 of the works were seized by Hitler's right-hand man, Hermann Goering.
Several hundred of them, mostly by Dutch artists, were returned to the Dutch government after the war. Others, including pieces by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Goya, Rubens, Brueghel, Titian and Tintoretto, remain lost.
His widow was unable to recover the art.
Marei von Saher, Goudstikker's daughter-in-law who lives in Greenwich, began seeking the recovery of the Dutch works in 1996 on behalf of herself and her daughters, Jacques Goudstikkers' grandchildren. The Dutch government agreed in 2006 to return 200 of the paintings worth an estimated $79 million to $110 million, one of the largest restitutions ever.
"I really think the world felt the wrongs had to be put right," von Saher said Thursday in a telephone interview. "I really learned what the word perseverance stands for."
Some of the works returned to von Saher were auctioned in New York, London and Amsterdam to pay lawyers' fees, fund the curation of the remaining works, and to continue the search for lost paintings.
Von Saher said she hopes her case will inspire others to try to recover looted art.
"So many of the holocaust survivors are gone or will be gone shortly," von Saher said.
The exhibition includes the first painting of the New World by European master Jan Mostaert and Jan van der Heyden's View of Nyenrode Castle, the country estate that Goudstikker owned and opened to the public each summer in the 1930s. Another painting is Jan Steen's dramatic Sacrifice of Iphigenia of 1671.
The exhibition, which will move to The Jewish Museum in New York next year, also includes a small black book Goudstikker carried that listed most of his collection and helped his heirs prove the paintings belonged to him.
"That was the crucial piece of evidence," Sutton said.
After the war, some of the paintings were sold for little, von Saher said.
"I just want his name to be well known again, just be respected for what he really was," von Saher said. "Now everyone sees what a fabulous art connoisseur he really was."
