A French court has ordered Sotheby’s, the U.K.-based global broker of fine art, to cancel the sale of a 1902 painting by Camille Pissarro and return it to the descendants of a French Jewish banker whose art collection was seized by the Nazis in 1941, The Art Newspaper reported on Friday.
The painting, titled “Darse de pêche et bassin Duquesne” (“Fishing dock and Duquesne basin”), was sold at Sotheby’s London on June 25, 2024, for approximately $1.5 million.
The court gave Sotheby’s two months to disclose the buyer’s identity, imposing a penalty of €1,000 (about $1,120) for each day of delay thereafter.
In the auction page on Sotheby’s website the firm has stated that the work was offered for sale “pursuant to a settlement between the current owner and heirs of Salomon Flavian,” the banker whose collection was looted.
However, it also said that the painting was acquired by British artist and collector Edward Le Bas from dealer Paul Rosenberg in 1939, before the Nazis seized Flavian’s collection. Sotheby’s in court argued that a study supported this historical account, but the justices ruled otherwise, according to The Art Newspaper.
The body of evidence put forward by the lawyers of seven of Flavian’s descendants produced “precise elements” that Pissarro’s painting was among the works seized during World War II, the report continued.
The settlement mentioned on Sotheby’s website with Flavian’s heirs was reached with only two relatives, without consulting the rest, the lawyers further contested.
Sotheby’s London said in a statement quoted by The Times that “While we respect [the court’s] judgment regarding the restitution ..., we are disappointed by this aspect of the decision.”
Regarding the identity of the buyer, it added, “There is a procedural process that will need to be followed in order for this aspect of the decision to be enforced in the U.K., and we are reviewing the judgment in detail.”
The agreement between the two descendants and Sotheby’s was arranged by Toronto-based Mondex Corporation.
The court ordered both firms to compensate the seven claimants with €20,000 (~$22,300) to cover their legal expenses, the report said.
James Palmer, Mondex’s founder, said that he will appeal the decision.
He maintained that the painting was owned by Le Bas, despite it being included in a French register of looted property during the war published in 1947, according to The Times.
Corinne Hershkovitch, the seven claimants’ lawyer, described the court’s ruling as “important.” It “opens the way to a restitution that the Flavian family has demanded since the war. It shows Mondex’s failure in its mission, and now Sotheby’s has to bear the responsibility for having sold a looted artwork,” she told The Art Newspaper.
The Times reported that she told the justices that Rosenberg’s postwar notes were imprecise and that he might have conflated Pissarro’s painting with another of his works owned by Le Bas.
Pissarro (1830-1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist. Sotheby’s describes him as a “central force in the development of Impressionism and plein-air painting, mentoring artists such as Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin and Renoir.”
