Goudstikker paintings on view in New York

Examples from the largest known collection of Old Master paintings stolen by the Nazis are to go on view at Christie's in New York next week, before being sold on April 19. But a large part of the proceeds will go to paying mounting bills accumulated by lawyers and researchers on the project. . .

Toussaint estimates the cost of research in this case at "several hundred thousand dollars a year". Then there are the lawyers' fees. Last month, one of von Saher's former lawyers was awarded £5 million by a Dutch court after a dispute over fees charged.

The evidence at the hearing suggested von Saher would also have to pay 20 per cent of the value of the collection to another Dutch lawyer, 10 per cent to her US lawyers, and another 10 per cent for art-historical research. . .

The sale in New York comprises just 45 lots estimated to make up to £13 million. Reflecting Goudstikker's taste for 17th-century Dutch painting is a rich array of landscapes (a river view by Salomon van Ruysdael is estimated at £1.5 million to £2.5 million) and portraits (a portrait by Frans Hals's contemporary Johannes Verspronck could make £500,000). Goudstikker also sought to develop a more international style dealing in early Renaissance Italian paintings. An example in the sale is a 4ft-high, Giotto-esque tempera-and-gold panel painting of St Lucy by the Florentine painter Jacopo del Casentino (£400,000 to £600,000).

A further 95 works will be sold later this year in London and Amsterdam, but what will happen to the other 66 restituted paintings is yet to be decided. And then there are 1,000 paintings still missing, including, it is thought, works by Rembrandt, Velázquez, Rubens and Titian.

One of the most valuable to be identified is Lucas Cranach's diptych of Adam and Eve in the Norton Simon Museum in California, estimated to be worth some £50 million. The Christie's sale therefore promises to be the first of many Goudstikker sales as the costs rise and the bills have to be paid.

That estimate for the Cranach seems awfully high. From the Telegraph.

Posted by David on April 3, 2007 11:07 AM