Jacques Goudstikker was the Netherlands’ biggest art dealer in the 1930s, influencing the tastes of collectors and museums while entertaining lavishly in his country home and castle. In 1940, he hastily left it all behind — including about 1,400 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. 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 of the successful fight by his heirs to win back the paintings.

The exhibition, at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn., “Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker,” features about 40 of the finest paintings from his collection. It runs through Sept. 7.

“This is a kind of time capsule,” said Peter Sutton, the museum’s executive director.

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.

Marei von Saher, Goudstikker’s daughter-in-law who lives in Greenwich, Conn., 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.

The exhibition will move to The Jewish Museum, in New York City, next year.On the Web: http://www.brucemuseum.org