among these works collected by matsukata, those known today as the nmwa matsukata collection were initially stored in french museums under the supervision of the famous french art museum curator léonce bénédite . they remained in france until after world war ii, and, as part of the san francisco peace treaty, they were briefly confiscated by france. the french government eventually decided to give back the majority of those artworks to the japanese government as a sign of the renewed amity between the two countries, except for 14 valuable paintings by monet, van gogh, courbet, cézanne, and others which were retained to fill in gaps in the french national collection. .