Van Gogh Painting Seized By Nazis Reappears In Public To Go Up For Sale
Image via Christie’s
A well-traveled Vincent van Gogh watercolor will greet the public for the first time in over a century ahead of an auction at Christie’s London.
After the historic viewing from October 17 to 21, marking the first time since 1905 that the painting is being exhibited, Meules de Blé or Wheatstacks (1888) will go under the hammer at an estimated selling price of US$20 to US$30 million.
Proceeds from the sale will be split three ways: between the current owner, the descendants of a Jewish Berlin-based man who left the artwork behind amid his escape from the country at the dawn of World War II, and the heirs of a Jewish family who acquired the piece during the war.
The paper painting was purchased by Berlin-based manufacturer Max Meirowsky in 1913, the New York Times reports. However, when Germany fell under Nazi rule, Meirowsky handed the artwork to German-Jewish art dealer Paul Graupe and fled the country in 1938.
Graupe, based in Paris, sold the van Gogh work to Alexandrine de Rothschild, who came from a Jewish family of bankers. Once again, the Nazi invasion took the art off the new owner’s hands, and de Rothschild escaped to Switzerland. The Nazis then confiscated the art.
The details of its footpath afterward are quite blurry, but it eventually landed at the Wildenstein & Co. in New York in 1978, before being sold to Texan oil businessman Edwin Cox.
The forthcoming sale on November 11 consists of Cox’s collection, contributed by his family members, with the van Gogh art as its highlight. If sold, the painting could set a world record for the highest price paid for a van Gogh paper work at an auction.
[via New York Times, images via Christie’s]
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