The Tamesis
The sale of a painting by Camille Pissarro in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection has been re-examined by its former owner, department store magnate and art collector Max Julius Braunthal.
It is reported new york timesBlauthal’s seven heirs have filed a lawsuit in a French court, claiming that the painting, Haystack, Morning, Eragny (1899), sold under duress in 1941. The Met insists it received fair market value for Braunthal’s work, which depicts several domed haystacks on a verdant, wooded meadow in Eragny, a village northwest of Paris where Pissarro lived from 1884 until his death in 1903.
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Braunthal’s heirs cited a 2023 French law that made all art sales by Jews during the Nazi occupation of France deemed invalid. For sale in Blauthal Haystack, Morning, Eragny During this period it was sold to the gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel for 100,000 francs.
Devorah Lauter reports in France’s Inalienable Public Domain that the law allows “the return of stolen art, books and other cultural property within France’s inalienable public domain – even works looted abroad – to their rightful owners”. art news.
The plaintiffs argue that whether the 1941 price reflects fair market value is irrelevant under the 2023 law. Art law expert tells eraHowever, a French court ruling in favor of Blauthal’s heirs would not force the Met to immediately return the painting; the heirs would still have to convince a U.S. court to enforce the French judgment, unless the Met appeals the decision in France. One lawyer noted that even if a French court invalidated the original sale, it would still constitute important evidence if the family filed a new lawsuit in the United States.
Among the evidence supporting this claim, Haystack, Morning, Eragny Coerced and below market value, Durand-Ruel resold the painting two weeks later for 140,000 francs to German collector Wolfgang Kluge.
The painting came into the Met’s collection through Douglas Dillon, the museum’s former chairman of the board, who bequeathed it to the institution in 2003, the year of his death. Dillon purchased this work from Knoedler Gallery in 1959.
