The descendants of a Jewish publishing family who fled Nazi Germany are seeking to stop the auction of a Vincent van Gogh painting expected to fetch £135 million, claiming it was sold under duress as a result of Nazi persecution.
Châtaigniers en fleurs (Blossoming Chestnut Trees), painted in 1890, is due to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York on Wednesday. But the American-based heirs of Samuel Fischer, the founder of the renowned German publishing house S Fischer Verlag, have challenged the sale, arguing that their family was compelled to part with the painting in 1936 after fleeing Berlin.
Their lawyer, Gunnar Schnabel, has called on Sotheby’s to establish that the artwork was sold at a fair market price and that the family would have agreed to the transaction even if the Nazis had not been in power.
In an email to the auction house, seen by the New York Times, Schnabel said his client was willing to seek a “fair and just solution in the spirit of the 1998 Washington Principles”, the international agreement establishing guidelines for resolving claims involving art confiscated by the Nazis.
Fischer acquired the painting in 1909, more than two decades before Hitler came to power. Following his death in 1934, his son-in-law, Gottfried Bermann Fischer, took over the publishing house, whose authors increasingly faced censorship and bans under the Nazi regime.
As persecution intensified, Bermann Fischer and his family fled Berlin for Vienna, where he relocated the business. According to the heirs, the Van Gogh was sold through an Amsterdam gallery just three months after their departure from Germany, at a time when Nazi restrictions severely limited the assets Jews could take abroad.
The family was also required to pay the so-called Reich Flight Tax, which the Nazi authorities used to confiscate wealth from people leaving Germany.
The painting had previously been deposited, together with two works by Paul Cézanne, with art dealer Walter Feilchenfeldt at the Paul Cassirer gallery in Amsterdam.
After the war, Bermann Fischer sought compensation for assets seized under the Nazi regime. However, the sale of the Van Gogh took place in the Netherlands in 1936, four years before the German occupation, leaving no legal basis at the time for a restitution claim.
The heirs are now seeking a resolution under the Washington Principles, which encourage the identification of Nazi-confiscated art and the pursuit of fair settlements with the descendants of its former owners.
In a statement, Sotheby’s responded to the auction’s challenge.
“We are aware of the concerns recently raised by representatives of the Fischer heirs and have been in dialogue with them regarding the painting’s history,” the auction house said.
“While our research to date has not established that the painting was sold under duress, we recognise the importance of engaging thoughtfully and constructively with the family and are committed to working toward a mutually satisfactory resolution.”
It remained unclear whether the auction would proceed as scheduled.
Van Gogh painted Blossoming Chestnut Trees in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, in the final months of his life in 1890. The work subsequently became part of the collection assembled by Argentine art collectors Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier during the 1960s.
Hidden from public view for six decades, the collection has long been regarded as one of the most remarkable privately held groups of Impressionist and modernist paintings.
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