Jewish Heirs Challenge Sale of $180 Million van Gogh Painting at Sotheby’s

The heirs of the Jewish former owner of an important painting by Vincent van Gogh have asked Sotheby’s to withdraw the work from sale just days before it was to be auctioned in Manhattan, arguing that it was sold under duress in 1936 as a consequence of persecution by the Nazis.

The 1890 painting, “Châtaigniers en Fleurs (Blossoming Chestnut Trees),” carries an estimate of $180 million, the highest for any lot at this season’s art auctions, and higher than any price ever paid at auction for a work by Van Gogh. The artist painted it in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, after spending two years in the south of France. The work, which is the centerpiece of the marquee fall auctions coming up next week, is backed by a financial guarantee from Sotheby’s.

The heirs, who live in the United States, say the painting was sold in Amsterdam before the Second World War as a result of financial losses sustained by their family’s publishing company under the Nazis. Gunnar Schnabel, the heirs’ Berlin lawyer, urged Sotheby’s to prove beyond a doubt that the painting was sold at market value in 1936 and that the family “would have wanted to carry out the sale even without Nazi rule.”

“Otherwise,” Schnabel wrote in a Nov. 12 email to Marco Toracca, the head of Sotheby’s restitution department, “no auction may take place.” In the email, made available to The New York Times, he said his client “is prepared to work toward a fair and just solution in the spirit of the 1998 Washington Principles,” international guidelines designed to help institutions and governments handling confiscated or Nazi-looted art.

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“Blossoming Chestnut Trees” is part of the Blaquier-Arrieta collection, which Philip Hook, a former Sotheby’s executive and author, described in the auction house’s announcement of the sale as “the stuff of legend: whispered about, kept from public view.” Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier of Buenos Aires began collecting Impressionist and modern art in the 1960s.

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