Elizabeth Taylor fights for Van Gogh painting
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declare her the lawful owner of a Van Gogh painting that heirs of a former
owner say was stolen by the Nazis.
In a federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles, the Oscar-winning actress
said she bought "View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy," painted in 1889,
at a Sotheby's & Co. auction in London in 1963.
The lawsuit said four people claiming to be heirs of the painting's former
owner, Margarete Mauthner, contacted Taylor's manager to demand its return or
the proceeds from its sale.
Although the claimants believe Mauthner, a Berlin resident, lost the painting
to the Nazis, evidence shows that she sold it in 1933 "for financial reasons,"
the lawsuit said.
According to the catalog from the 1963 auction, the painting passed from
Mauthner to two reputable galleries before it was sold to a German Jew, Alfred
Wolf, who himself fled the Nazis in 1933 for Buenos Aires, the lawsuit said.
Mauthner's sale of her Van Gogh collection to finance her family's emigration
to South Africa also was documented in a 2001 German book, the lawsuit said.
Taylor bought the painting for $257,000 from Wolf's estate and tried
unsuccessfully to sell it in 1990 for $10 million, the suit said.
While Taylor "has great sympathy for those whose families lost their
possessions" during World War II and the Holocaust, the defendants "have not
provided a shred of evidence that the painting ever fell into Nazi hands," the
lawsuit said.
The violet-eyed actress also argued that the defendants' claim to the painting
should be barred by the statute of limitations, which expired three years after
Taylor purchased the painting.
"When they sit on their alleged rights for decades before attempting to
dispossess an innocent, good-faith purchaser, the law owes them no special
deference," the suit said.