A Paris Court has ordered Sotheby’s to return a painting looted by the Nazis to the heirs of its original Jewish owner.
The family sued the auction house over its sale of the 1902 artwork, Darse de pêche et bassin Duquesne, Dieppe, après-midi ensoleillée, by Camille Pissarro.
The painting originally belonged to Salomon Flavian, a wealthy Romanian Jewish banker and art dealer who lived in Paris, but it was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 during the occupation of France.
It has had numerous owners since, including stints at the Tate in London and the Met in New York City, before ultimately ending up in the Sotheby's auction catalogue in 2024.
In September, Flavian’s heirs received a settlement from Sotheby’s, through law firm Mondex Corporation.
However, several of the seven heirs argued that only two of them were told about the settlement prior to the deal being done, meaning they had no say in agreeing to it. They also claim that the two heirs who did agree received twice the figure the other heirs did and pushed to have the painting returned instead.
In the Paris court’s decision on Thursday, all sales since the 1941 seizure were nullified, and it was ordered that the painting be returned to the heirs.
It concluded that the Flavian family established that Salomon had indeed owned the painting and that it had been confiscated by the Germans, and that Flavian had taken steps to recover it after the war, along with other paintings of his that had also been taken.
The court ordered Sotheby’s to inform the heirs of the identity of the buyer in the 2024 sale, or be fined £833 every day until it does.
In an email to ARTnews, Mondex Corporation consultant James Palmer said that an appeal will be filed “forthwith”.
He maintained that a British art collector, Edward Le Bas, was in fact the owner of the painting from 1939 to the early 1950s, meaning the Nazis could not have seized it from Flavian in 1941.
Palmer wrote: “These crucial facts were not commented upon by the court in its decision and can therefore be presumed to have been given no significant consideration, which is a flaw in the judicial assessment of the case.
“We are confident that when the vast amount of complex provenance research evidence is properly understood and considered, the court of appeal will reach a different conclusion.”
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