The most expensive works of art in the world and their histories (or lack thereof)-Part One

by Marc Masurovsky

Our collective jaws routinely drop when we read about a work of art selling for sums of money that most of us cannot comprehend or even perceive. And yet, there exists an informal club of men and women who are capable of spending such sums.

We won’t waste time wondering whether or not they actually enjoy the art objects on which they lavish huge sums. Their investment redefines what is meant by “priceless.” Is priceless an unattainable sum for the common mortal? Is it a sum that is beyond the reach of a billionaire? Or is it a sum that does not exist?

No matter.

“Transparency”, read less opacity, is the operative principle pertaining to research into the history of art objects even when they fetch sums symbolized by figures that contain eight or nine Arabic numerals.

Let’s take a look at some of these objects for which their proud owners spent at least 60 million dollars.



1. Bassin aux Nympheas, 1919, by Claude Monet sold for 66 million dollars at Christie’s on June 24, 2008.

Bassin aux nymphéas, 1919, Claude Monet-Source: Christie's

It belonged initially to the famous Paris art dealing family of Bernheim-Jeune who then sold this dreamy painting to a member of the Durand-Ruel family, another Parisian art dealer, from there to Sam Salz, Norton Simon, an owner in Indiana and then the Millers whose estate sold it off in 2008. This information is accessible through the Christie’s catalogue.


2. The massacre of the Innocents, 1610, by Peter Paul Rubens sold for 76 million dollars in July 2002 through Sotheby’s. Originally misattributed to Jan van den Hoecke, it remained in the same family for close to two centuries. Then it changed owners either before or right after the First World War (1914-1918), fell into the hands of an Austrian family whose patriarch did not like it, thinking it was “ugly” and consigned it to a monastery until the 89-year old heiress of said Austrian family had a change of heart and decided to put it up for sale.

The Massacre of the Innocents, 1610, Peter Paul Rubens

3. Le Moulin de la Galette, by Auguste Renoir, sold for 78 million dollars on May 15, 1990 at Christie’s. The smaller of the two versions that Renoir painted, no one knows for certain whether it was painted before or after its more famous larger version which Renoir completed in 1876. It went through the now defunct New York art gallery, Knoedler’s, where John Hay Whitney acquired it in 1929. It remained in the Whitney family until 1990 when it was auctioned and sold to a maverick Japanese businessman, Mr. Saito. He later ran out of money and was forced to sell off his assets including this Renoir painting and one by Van Gogh. Rumor has it that this less ambitious version of “Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette” ended up in a private Swiss collection. 

Le Moulin de la Galette, n. d., Auguste Renoir

4. Portrait of Dr. Gachet, 1890, by Vincent van Gogh sold for 82 million dollars on May 15, 1990 at Christie’s. Its history carries with it the taint of Nazi cultural policies aimed at works that were deemed objectionable because of their content and execution. This painting by van Gogh changed hands a number of times in the early 20th century, through the Paul Cassirer gallery in Berlin then Galerie Druet in Paris before ending up in the permanent collection of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. Following the rise to power of the Nazis on January 30, 1933, museum officials there tried their best to shield their “degenerate” works from the prying eyes of the Nazis. Unfortunately, “Dr. Gachet” was a well-known work and van Gogh did not whet the esthetic appetites of the new barbarians clad in brown and black uniforms. Pursuant to official Reich policies, the painting was de-accessioned in 1937 and joined other captive works in the ever-expanding collection of Reichmarschall Hermann Goering. With the help of Joseph Angerer, art historian and art dealer in the pay of Nazi officials, Goering sold “Dr. Gachet” to a German banker, Franz Koenigs, who then allegedly turned around and sold it or relinquished it to Siegfried Kramarsky. The Kramarsky family fled to New York just in time with the van Gogh. The painting was placed on long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as of 1984. Thereupon, the Kramasky heirs decided to sell it. Mr. Saito, a Japanese businessman who boasted of possessing a vast fortune, spent a small fortune on the van Gogh, breaking all records to date for a painting by the tortured Dutch master.

Portrait of Dr. Gachet, 1890, van Gogh

Then, the painting disappeared from view. It did not help that Mr. Saito went into such exponential debt that, no doubt, “Dr. Gachet” was sold in a private sale. But to whom?

Charles Goldstein, executive director of the New York-based Commission for Art Recovery (CAR), was quoted as saying that, one way or another, the title to the painting is clouded and resale will be difficult. Which would explain why the painting has not resurfaced in the past two decades. Condemned, due to a tainted title, to remain in the global parallel art market of sub rosa transactions. This will not help the Koenigs heiress to recover the painting that she claims was not sold consensually to Kramasky. Or so it would seem.

See the fascinating book by Cynthia Saltzman, “The Portrait of Dr. Gachet: The Story of a Van Gogh Masterpiece, Money, Politics, Collectors, Greed, and Loss” which takes the story of Dr. Gachet up to Mr. Saito.

Illicit Art Trade 101: The Case of the Missing Marcos Paintings

On November 21, 2012, we learned that Imelda Marcos’ personal secretary, Ms. Vilma Bautista, was indicted in New York with two other individuals for selling Claude Monet’s “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas” to a London buyer for $32 million back in 2010 and for trying to sell three Impressionist works—L’Eglise et la Seine à Vétheuil, by Claude Monet (1881), “Le Cyprès de Djenan Sidi Said,” by Albert Marquet (1946) and “Langland Bay,” by Alfred Sisley (1887)— Ms. Bautista had obtained all four works under dubious circumstances from an apartment at 13-15 East 66th Street, in New York City controlled by the Marcos family and known as the “Philippine House”. The paintings remained concealed for two decades.

13-15 E. 66th Street, NY, NY
Source: Google

Imelda Marcos in 1982
Source: Google

According to the New York Times, Mrs. Marcos had acquired these paintings in the 1970s from an unspecified London art dealer and had brought them back to Manila before shipping them to New York in 1982.

This case should be sub-titled “Art Theft 101” or better still “Illicit Art Trade 101.”

Indeed, the premise is simple: an individual, Vilma Bautista, gains control under unclear circumstances of four (4) Impressionist paintings in the late 1980s. A decade goes by and, together with two other individuals, a plan is hatched to sell them. It dawns on at least one of the members of this alleged conspiracy that they do not have good title to the paintings. Hence, it would be a bit difficult to sell them on the open market since they would most likely be nabbed. First lesson: theft does not convey title. Ms. Bautista’s actions with the Marcos paintings are no different than what opportunistic individuals did during the Nazi years—somehow gained access to victims’ property, hid the stolen items, oftentimes for decades before releasing them for sale. The more well-known the items, the more likely they would have to be sold on the sly through a parallel market.

This is precisely what Ms. Bautista and her accomplices attempted to do.

First off, officialize title to the works. To do so, Bautista sought out a “notary.” That notary issued a so-called certificate of authority bearing the forged signature of Imelda Marcos. In short, this document legalized Ms. Bautista’s authority to sell the paintings without worry.

Le bassin aux nympheas, by Claude Monet, 1899
Source: Google

Secondly, it proved more complicated than expected to sell the prize painting of the lot, Monet’s “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas.” Estimated at somewhere around $40 million, the Bautista team knew that it would fetch a low value on the parallel market. In order to go through with the sale, the painting needed to be authenticated and processed for shipment overseas in case the prospective buyer was not on American soil. Hence, they enlisted several real estate brokers to cover their tracks and act as decoys or ‘fronts.’ Lesson: when selling hot property, including illicitly obtained art works whether in association with acts of mass slaughter or plain old misappropriation such as in the Marcos case, one needs to enlist a “go-between” who is accustomed to working unethically on the dark side of the tracks and can facilitate through “contacts” and “networks” an illicit sale, even beyond national borders.

In this case, after one failed attempt with a prospective buyer in New York, who actually raised concerns about the provenance and the right of Ms. Bautista to sell the painting in the first place, a prospective buyer was identified in London who would be willing to pay $32 million for the painting, despite his misgivings about title and authority of Ms. Bautista to dispose of this high-value item. The Bautista team even invoked Mrs. Marcos’ name to lend credibility to the pedigree of the work. Eventually, the painting was sold after the London buyer received written reassurances about the provenance of the work.

Question: $32 million represents a fairly tidy sum to spend on a painting for which there are doubts about clear title and ownership history. With so many questions hanging in the balance, how could a buyer act on the assumption that the people whom he suspected of being less than honest with him in fact were legitimate and had the right to sell him the Monet painting? Did the mere mention of Mrs. Marcos’ name impress this person beyond a doubt? Is it that easy, therefore, to swindle very wealthy people on the simple premise that these people would prefer to own an impressive Monet painting even with a cloud hanging over the true ownership of the work? This most recent example proves that, indeed, monied players in the international art market continue to forgo common sense, throw caution to the wind, do not follow their gut instincts and agree to acquire objects with problematic origins as to title and ownership. If they can do it with a recently-acquired painting, they can certainly do it with works that changed hands illegally more than 65 years ago and remained ‘concealed’ for decades before reappearing on the market—open or parallel.

Cyrus Vance, Jr.
Source: Google

To cap this story, the District Attorney of Manhattan, Cyrus Vance, Jr., stated unequivocally: “The integrity of the international art market must be protected….” I wonder where he was when Nazi looted art surfaced in his jurisdiction. We never heard him make such statements before. Let’s hope he means it and applies the lessons of the Marcos case to historic WWII-era thefts. Time will tell. One thing is sure: Cyrus Vance, Jr., pales in comparison to his predecessor, Robert Morgenthau. C’est la vie…

Epilogue: when checking Volume IV of the catalogue raisonné of Claude Monet’s works, authored by Daniel Wildenstein, there exist 11 variants of the “Bassin aux Nymphéas” all painted in 1899. Only one of them is in London, at the National Gallery (No. 1516, p. 156). There are no references whatsoever to a painting fitting that description and acquired by Mrs. Marcos in the 1970s which then hung at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines. Curious?

Monet Catalogue raissoné
Source: Google

Nazi looted art conference at Lafayette College, Easton, PA: a debriefing (II)

Day 2: October 27, 2011

Lafayette College
Source: Lafayette College via Flickr

Lafayette College is a small architectural jewel nestled in a set of rolling hills not too far from Allentown. Every building on its tightly designed campus does not conform to any cookie-cutter design. In some sense, a student of architecture would have a genuine ‘field day’ at Lafayette College.

Tiffany Windows
Source: Lafayette College Art Collection

The college is home to several cultural institutions which are always enjoyable to visit because their contents give the visitor an insight into the tastes, proclivities and priorities of the curators, the art historians and the administration. One of the biggest surprises can be found at the College Library in the form of two large-size Tiffany stained glass windows that adorn different parts of the library and project at different times of the day a strange array of hues onto those who read and loll in their midst.

It is also in the Library where some of the lectures were staged on Day Two of the Conference. The room where the talks occurred was framed in a glass-encased corner of the Library which gave the proceedings a natural openness filled with the filtered light of a typical October day, not enough to compete with artificial lighting, not enough to prevent you from viewing projected Powerpoint slides.

The room was full of undergraduate students, faculty, staff, and out-of-town visitors, which lent the presentations a well-earned level of attention that one can only find on college campuses. This is a good time to take a break and muse on this intriguing phenomenon. Why do so many people who have never heard of “looted art,” “cultural plunder”, “degenerate art”, “restitution”, “Washington Principles,” “provenance research,” flock to these events? Granted, interested professors flog their flock into attending these presentations on pain of reprisals at exam time (joke!). However, the phenomenon is widespread and unexplainable when contrasted by the sheer indifference displayed by policymakers, so-called art experts, even historians themselves. It’s as if one senses a thirst to know more, to learn, to find out the details, to search for meaning, a thirst that is left unquenched by the strictures and preconceptions of academicians and professionals alike. So much for the soap box.

The presentations went well. Victoria Reed of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts provided a well-thought out description of how the MFA has treated claims for works and objects in its collections in recent years. A major cultural institution better known for its irascible refusal to restitute anything, especially antiquities, the MFA has gradually adapted to the complexities of art restitution and the circumstances under which objects might have changed hands illegally owing to racial and other forms of persecutions against their rightful owners.  Although there is a long way to go still, the MFA has demonstrated that, when called upon to make the difficult choice to restitute a claimed object, thereby de-accessioning it, the benefit of the doubt is being given to the claimant, thereby reversing a decades-old tradition of invoking traditional legal defenses to forestall restitution.

"Portrait of a Man And Woman In An Interior" by Eglon van der Neer
Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The two keynote lectures of Day Two were scheduled for the evening in a large amphitheater-like room where the “Rape of Europa” had been screened the previous evening. The first keynote was delivered by Jonathan Petropoulos, who teaches at Claremont-McKenna College in California, followed by Lucian Simmons, who heads up global restitution efforts at Sotheby’s in New York.

Jonathan Petropoulos, Phd
Source: Claremont McKenna College

The two presentations were remarkable for one reason only: they were both anchored in personal experience. Jonathan Petropoulos chose to regale the audience on how his interest in Nazi cultural policy morphed into a lifelong quest to come to grips with Nazi looted art and to “do the right thing” for claimants. On the other hand, Simmons unapologetically built on the fact that he was at Sotheby’s to optimize returns for “the house”—it is a for-profit operation after all!—and if art restitution can serve the interests of his employers while doing some good along the way, so much the better for it. Sure!

For those who love redemption stories, Petropoulos’ presentation was a case in point. Charming, articulate, deeply versed in his field, entertaining at times, the tall, soft-spoken professor from Claremont McKenna put forth the image of an honest do-gooder who, in the course of his crusade to get to the bottom of the looted art problematic, got in way over his head at times, risking his professional career, his reputation and, god forbid, even the safety of his family! No comment…well, yes, there will be comments, but not what you might expect.

Aside from being well-published, Jonathan Petropoulos came to prominence in the budding world of restitution of Nazi loot when, in the late 1990s, he stumbled on evidence that a painting by Claude Monet on loan at a museum in Boston had been pilfered in Paris by local agents of Nazi Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. That particular painting once belonged to the legendary Parisian Jewish art dealer, Paul Rosenberg. The painting was returned to the Rosenberg heirs, all was well and Jonathan was now a player in the art restitution field.Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps (1903)

We bumped into each other while serving as directors of research at the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust-Era Assets (PCHA) in 1999 and 2000. While I focused on looted gold, Petropoulos took on the charge of investigating looted art. The final report of the PCHA speaks volumes (a thin one, to be honest) on its overall accomplishments. I will leave it at that.

"Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps (1903)" by Camille Pissarro
Source: Artinfo

Years later, Petropoulos’ name and fortunes became indelibly linked, by his own making, to a notorious Nazi war criminal, master plunderer SS Captain Bruno Lohse, deputy commander of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) operation in German-occupied Paris, and, for a short time, actual head and master coordinator of anti-Jewish cultural plunder in German-occupied France, before his retreat to Germany in the summer of 1944, his brief incarceration, trial and conviction by a French military court (very light sentence), before becoming a very successful art dealer in … you guessed it!.... “degenerate art” and Impressionists from his luxury apartment in Munich. His business operations extended mainly to Switzerland and Lichtenstein. In short, Petropoulos had befriended Lohse and maintained a decade-long relationship with the former war criminal until Lohse’s death in 2007. The public perception of Petropoulos and Lohse centered on a complicated attempt at restituting a famed painting by Claude Pissarro (Quai Malaquais), the property of the Bermann-Fischer publishing fortune and the subject of a forced sale in Vienna before ending up in Lohse’s private collection. The claims and counterclaims are ugly and should be the subject of a separate article. Suffice it to say that the painting was finally sold at Christie’s in 2009.

Petropoulos came out of his keynote speech as a selfless crusader for the cause of claimants seeking to recover looted art. Someone in the audience asked him: “Why do you do it?” He replied that this is his life’s work and he must. Sigh!

Lucian Simmons
Source: Sotheby's

Lucian Simmons is a character. Witty, refreshingly light on his feet, impeccably-dressed, he cuts a very appealing figure while describing in a most understated way (oh! So British!!) his daily schedule busy brokering restitutions, recoveries, sales of recovered items, fending off Russian pseudo-mafiosi-like characters, while babysitting elderly women in upstate New York, all in a heartbeat, seven days a week. And, of course, in the midst of all of this, his Christmas days are routinely disrupted by restitution crises. Oy gevalt! Who would have known?! The trouble is that Lucian does very well for the house with the trade in recovered stolen cultural property. Trouble, I say? Well, yes, it is troublesome to think that one can earn so much money off of historically-centered cultural larceny with genocide and persecution as its moral backdrop, layered by failed and flawed recoveries in the postwar world, complicated by supposedly bona fide acquisitions which would transform current possessors into victims on par with Nazi victims! Well, yes, I have a problem with this, but that’s just me.

Restitution? How does one broker a restitution while working at Sotheby’s? More often than not, it is the result of a complex discussion between the consigner, the claimant, and “the house.” The goal is the sale. The outcome: who will profit from it? This is referred to as restitution. I call it a financial settlement that upholds the rights of the current possessor. And Lucian is a master at this craft. Not to fault him for it, but one must admit that it is a skewed vision of the overall framework that informs the global debate on cultural plunder and its legal and ethical consequences at the point of sale.

Nevertheless, after a hard day at the office, Simmons finds a way of trumpeting the positives of his heady job, emphasizing that good things come of these intersections with history.

Needless to say, one can take only so much from self-scripted redemption to unabashed optimization in the same evening. So much for the current state of affairs as pertains to Nazi looted art and current efforts at restituting plundered items to their rightful owners.

"Le déjeûner sur l’herbe" by Claude Monet almost plundered?

Claude Monet, the icon of French Impressionism, slaved for over a year painting a picnic on the grass with well-dressed men and women, all friends of the artist, enjoying a sunny day and a well-stocked meal. “Le déjeûner sur l’herbe”, painted somewhere between 1865 and 1866 remained in Monet’s possession until the end of his life. Lousy storage conditions produced mildew damage in corners of the work which Monet had to slice off twenty years after painting this masterpiece.

Le déjeûner sur herbe, Claude Monet
Source: Musée d'Orsay

His son, Michel Monet, inherited the work upon his father's death in 1926 together with many other paintings which Claude had either refused to sell or could not sell in his lifetime, leaving him in recurring debt and constantly on the brink of total destitution. And yet…

Michel Monet
Source: Giverny News

Right about the time of the German invasion of France in the spring of 1940, Michel Monet lent the painting to the Louvre for an exhibit being organized on the hundredth anniversary of Monet’s birth, “Le Centenaire de Claude Monet.”

And then came the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) and its swashbuckling local dignitary, SS Colonel von Behr, former director of the German Red Cross.

Von Behr, in all his anti-Semitic wisdom, received word that the “Déjeûner sur l’herbe” belonged to a Jewish collection named André Weil. He ordered the painting removed from the Louvre and transferred to the Jeu de Paume for “disposal.” Meanwhile, a more pragmatic “cultural official” in the newly-installed German military administration (Militärbefehlshaber für Frankreich), member of the Kunstschutz, realized that the ERR was making a big mistake and that the painting belonged to Monet’s son, Michel Monet, and should be returned to him forthright.

Reason prevailed at least in those early days of cultural plundering in German-occupied Paris. On 17 December 1940, the “Déjeûner sur l’herbe” was returned to its rightful owner and was put on display as part of his late father’s legacy to art and to culture.

Other works and other collectors were not so lucky.

Thank God for Michel Monet! He was not Jewish.

Looted art in Italy

Although the more than 48 postwar Italian governments have been focused largely on what the Germans removed from Italy during their two-year occupation of the country, little attention has been paid to looted art entering the Italian art market from Western Europe, Switzerland, and Austria.

Italian art dealers are an expert lot with ties to galleries, museums, and collectors around the world, namely in Europe and the Americas. Despite the rise to power of Benito Mussolini in 1922 and the instauration of a Fascist government, normal trade relations and cultural exchanges persisted well into the 1930s between the new Italy and its neighbors, even as far away as the United States.

After the German invasion of Western Europe in spring 1940 and the systematic plundering of hundreds of Jewish collections that ensued over the next four years, Italian galleries were busily entering into the fray as possible avenues of recycling loot. Capitalizing on their privileged relations with art experts and museum officials from Nazi Germany, these Italian dealers were only too glad to be paid in kind with modernist and especially Impressionist works, in exchange for which they offered Italian and other Old Masters to German agents. Italian dealers like Ventura and Bonacossi were more than willing to adapt to the German way of trading art: My Bellotto for 2 Monets. Joke aside, this is as close to the truth as one can get when it comes to these exchanges.

The following works were used to pay off Italian dealers in exchanges brokered by Goering’s favorite art specialist, Walther Andreas Hofer:

A painting by Sisley belonging to the Lindon family in Paris;

Three paintings by Monet, one belonging to Lindon, the other two to Paul Rosenberg;

One painting by Renoir belonging to Paul Rosenberg;

One painting by Degas belonging to Paul Rosenberg;

One painting by Cézanne belonging to Alphonse Kann of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

ERR database—Impressionists and their collectors

Usually, when people think of art restitution or art looted by the Nazis, they tend to believe that most stolen objects consisted of paintings, drawings and etchings, and more specifically, works by the Impressionists and their followers. Popular names that come to mind: Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Pierre Matisse, and Paul Cézanne.

When the art specialists of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) pilfered the homes and galleries of collectors and dealers across French territory, but more specifically in and around Paris, they came across troves of Impressionist works. One would think that almost anyone who was anyone would collect Impressionists in France, right? Wrong!

On closer look, here's what we found out.

Of the 270 owners who are currently listed in the ERR database, fewer than 10 per cent held works by Impressionists in their collections at the time of the German occupation of France in June 1940.

Let's do a survey by artist (Note: I use the word "unknown" to refer to the MA-B and UNB collections, categories created by the ERR staff to characterize mass seizures of objects from residential homes without due concern for their owners' identities):

• Pierre Bonnard: 8 known owners and at most 6 unknown. 
• Eugène Boudin: 9 known owners and at most 4 unknown. 
• Paul Cézanne: 2 known owners and at most 3 unknown. 
• Edgar Degas: 13 known owners and at most 2 unknown. 
• Paul Gauguin: 5 known owners 
• Marie Laurencin: 11 known owners and at most 3 unknown. 
• Edouard Manet: 7 known owners and 1 unknown. 
• Henri Matisse: 4 known owners and at most 11 unknown. 
• Claude Monet: 4 known owners and at most 4 unknown. 
• Auguste Renoir: 16 known owners and at most 9 unknown. 
• Edouard Vuillard: 7 known owners and 1 unknown. 

Needless to say, we can already conclude that the tastes of collectors in inter-war France extended way beyond the lure of Impressionists that seduces today's learned audiences in the global art market.

The question is: what did people collect if they didn't gravitate towards Impressionists?