The New York Supreme Court has ruled that David Nahmad must return a Nazi-looted painting by Amedeo Modigliani. The ruling follows more than a decade of court battles between the Lebanese billionaire art dealer and an heir of the late Jewish dealer Oscar Stettiner, who once owned the painting.<\/p>\n
Stettiner fled Paris before the Nazi occupation in 1939, and the art collection he hurriedly left behind was seized and resold. Nahmad bought Seated Man With a Cane (1918), a portrait of a chocolate merchant, at a Christie\u2019s auction in 1996 for $3.2m. It has been in storage in Switzerland ever since.<\/p>\n
\u201cOscar Stettiner owned or at a minimum had a superior right of possession of the painting prior to its unlawful seizure,\u201d Judge Joel M. Cohen wrote in his decision. \u201cHe never voluntarily relinquished it.\u201d Cohen pointed out that this had already been proven in a French court in 1946, when Stettiner himself filed a claim. However, by the time that case had been decided, the painting had allegedly already been resold and could not be found. Stettiner died in 1948.<\/p>\n
It was later discovered<\/a> that Jean Van der Klip, the man who had bought the painting in 1944, lied about its whereabouts. His heirs were the ones who brought Seated Man With a Cane to auction 50 years later. The painting was again offered up for auction in 2008, this time at Sotheby\u2019s, but failed to sell\u2014perhaps because of gaps in provenance.<\/p>\n The New York lawsuit was filed in 2015 by Philippe Maestracci, Stettiner\u2019s grandson, and Mondex<\/a>, a company devoted to finding and restituting Nazi-looted art. Nahmad has long argued that the painting is not the same one that was taken from Stettiner. But in Cohen\u2019s ruling, he noted that Nahmad \u201cfailed to raise any material issues of fact, and offer no evidence that identifies anyone other than Mr. Stettiner as the owner of the painting or that he voluntarily relinquished it\u201d.<\/p>\n Cohen noted that the painting’s provenance listed for the 1996 sale had been fallacious \u201cby design or inadvertence\u201d, and that Nahmad was not involved in misleading the Stettiner family before the initial auction.<\/p>\n Seated Man With a Cane is estimated to be worth as much as $30m.<\/p>\n \u201cMr Maestracci is overwhelmed with joy and the satisfaction that, after so many years, the quest of his grandfather has finally been fulfilled,\u201d Mondex\u2019s founder, James Palmer, told Graham Bowley of The New York Times<\/a>. \u201cWe now look forward to Mr Nahmad to abide by his promise to return the painting upon receiving the order of the court.\u201d<\/p>\n