The court also nullified sales since the painting’s seizure and ordered Sotheby’s to identify its 2024 buyer or face a €1,000 daily fine. The judgment applies immediately, even if appealed.
A Paris court on 5 November ordered the return of a Camille Pissarro painting to the heirs of Salomon Flavian, a Jewish banker and art collector, and nullified all sales since its initial seizure. The court found that Flavian owned the work, that the Germans confiscated it and that he sought to recover his assets after the war. The Nazis seized his collection in Paris in 1941.
The work is Pissarro’s 1902 Darse de pêche et bassin Duquesne, Dieppe, après-midi ensoleillée, a view of the port in western France. Sotheby’s sold it in London on 25 June 2024, for £1.2 million (about $1.5 million at the time).
The ruling requires Sotheby’s to tell the family who bought the painting, subject to a €1,000 daily fine. It takes effect immediately, including if an appeal is filed.
Sotheby’s sale catalogue said Flavian had owned the painting in the 1930s and that it appeared in the French government’s 1947 register of looted art. The same information appeared in the 2005 Pissarro critical catalogue. The catalogue also said the sale followed a settlement with Flavian’s heirs; Sotheby’s told the court that their consent had been obtained through Mondex Corporation, a Toronto-based firm that works to recover art looted during the Holocaust.
At a September 18 hearing, seven heirs argued that only two relatives, Gilles and Nicholas Flavian, had signed the agreement and that they had not been consulted. Legal files showed that the two signatories, represented by Mondex, had waived their rights to the painting under a contract with the seller, The Art Newspaper said.
In a letter dated 17 October 2024, Mondex told relatives who had not been informed of the sale that it had accepted an 8% share of the net sale price in their name in exchange for their cooperation. An accompanying account listed family expenses and a 16% commission due from the two signatories. Palmer said Mondex had received no payment for the transaction.
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Mondex consultant James Palmer disputes the court’s conclusion. He told ARTnews that art dealer Paul Rosenberg’s archives and a 1939 Pissarro catalogue identify British artist and collector Edward Le Bas as the owner from 1939 to the early 1950s. Palmer said that would rule out seizure from Flavian during the 1940s.
The heirs’ lawyer, Corinne Hershkovitch, challenged the research behind that position. She said Rosenberg’s catalogue omitted Flavian’s ownership since 1935 and suggested it might have confused the work with another Pissarro painting acquired by Le Bas. She also questioned why Rosenberg’s records had not been compared with the Flavian archives.
Palmer said an appeal would be filed immediately and expressed confidence that an appeals court would reach a different conclusion after considering the ownership evidence.
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