“A gap in dates is a red flag”

Steven Brooks, a collector of Old Master paintings bought 'Allegorical Portrait of a Lady as Diana Wounded by Cupids' by the 18th-century French artist Louis-Michel van Loo through Sotheby’s in 2004. He paid £57,600. He is now suing them (lawsuit filed in California on 21 March) because when in 2010 he tried to auction it through Christie’s, the auction house’s specialists found that Hermann Goering had bought the work in 1939. There was a gap in the collecting history between 1906 and 1939 and it was unclear what had happened to it from 1939-1987. Christie’s refused to auction the work on the grounds that it might have been looted or seized from a Jewish family, the uncertainty about its collecting history "led us to conclude that we were uncertain as to whether we would be able to convey good title for the painting,” says a spokeswoman for Christie’s. It turns out that Sotheby’s will now neither auction it nor refund Brooks’ money.

The Nazi connection, the lawsuit says, creates “a cloud on title”—uncertainty over who is the rightful owner—that renders the painting unsaleable and without value [...]  The case could clarify “the responsibility of a major auction house with respect to knowing what it sells before it sells” and if “collectors can have an expectation of minimal due diligence prior to [such auction houses] putting a work on the market”, says Brooks’s lawyer, Thomas LoSavio of Low Ball and Lynch. [...] Private dealers say that, regardless of what an auction house does, they will not touch a work if its ownership cannot be traced between 1933, when the Nazis came to power, and 1945. “A gap in dates is a red flag,” says David Tunick, who deals in 15th- to 20th-century prints and drawings. “If it comes from Europe and there’s a gap, we wouldn’t take anything,” says the Old Masters dealer Richard Feigen.

This raises the question whether increased sensitivities to the collecting histories of dugup antiquities "surfacing" (from 'underground') on the market may not render them too unsaleable in the near future unless collectors make efforts to determine where items came from, whose hands they passed through and retain this information to pass on when an object is disposed of. Or will looted "ancient art" continue to circulate hidden among the heirloom items on a primarily no-questions-asked market for ever? Certainly that is what the majority of collectors and dealers seem to be assuming. Let us put a STOP to this.

Laura Gilbert, ''Collector says Sotheby’s sold him Nazi-owned art—now it's unsellable", Art Newspaper, 02 May 2013

Dave Tartre, 'Man Claims Sotheby's Sold Him Nazi Art', Courtroom News Service, March 25, 2013.

Photo: the 'unsaleable' painting 165.5 x 157 cm (Art Newspaper)