Van Gogh's masterpiece asked to be removed from Sotheby's over Reich-pressured deal
Descendants of the Jewish Fisher family appealed to the auction house Sotheby’s with a demand to cancel the auction with the painting by Vincent van Gogh “Châtaigniers en Fleurs”, writes The New York Times.
Descendants of the Jewish Fisher family appealed to the auction house Sotheby’s with a demand to cancel the auction with the painting by Vincent van Gogh “Châtaigniers en Fleurs”, writes The New York Times.
The 1890 painting is valued at $180 million, the highest price ever paid at auction for a Van Gogh work. Sotheby's is scheduled to trade on November 18.
The heirs of Jewish publisher Samuel Fischer claim that in 1936 the family was forced to sell the work under pressure from the Nazi regime. According to the version of the lawyer of the family Gunnar Schnabel, the painting was transferred to the art dealer Walter Feilhednfeldt in the early 1930s, and the subsequent sale in the Netherlands – in the homeland of Van Gogh – occurred under the conditions of coercion and payment of “special taxes of the Reich” when emigrating.
