Liz Taylor Sues to Keep Ownership of Van Gogh
chillled
Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor is fighting a family's
claims that a Vincent van Gogh painting she owns was taken from one of
their ancestors by Nazis.
Descendants of Margarete Mauthner claim "View of the Asylum of
Saint-Remy" was taken from the German woman during World War II, and are
demanding the Taylor return the painting, which appraisers said could
fetch $10 million to $15 million at auction.
Taylor, whose father bought her the painting at a London auction in
1963, has filed a lawsuit seeking a pre-emptive court declaration that
she is the rightful owner of the painting, which hangs in the living
room of her Bel-Air estate.
In a statement issued last month, Taylor said she has "a tremendous
amount of sympathy" for those who lost possessions during World War II
and the Holocaust. She said she told her lawyers to thoroughly
investigate the ownership history of the 115-year-old van Gogh.
"I have not been presented with any information that suggests the
painting was ever in Nazi possession, nor that there is any other basis
for these claims," the two-time Oscar winner said.
Seeking the painting are Canadian lawyer Andrew J. Orkin, his South
African siblings F. Mark Orkin and Sarah-Rose Josepha Adler, and their
uncle, A. Heinrich Zille, whose home country was unavailable. Andrew
Orkin is Mauthner's great-grandson, said his attorney Thomas Hamilton.
Taylor's attorneys acknowledge in her lawsuit, filed May 25 in U.S.
District Court in Los Angeles, that Nazis forced Mauthner and her family
to give up jobs, pensions and homes. But they say they could find no
"specific information about how or when Mauthner 'lost possession' of
the painting."
Orkin, an Ontario resident, refused to comment to The Associated Press.
Family lawyer John Byrne of Washington, D.C., also had no comment.
In an earlier statement, Hamilton said his clients "never claimed that
Nazis took the painting off Mauthner's wall at gunpoint" and that no
such showing is required under the 1998 federal Holocaust Victims
Redress Act.
The act, which was passed to compensate Holocaust victims who lost
possessions during World War II, urges all governments to facilitate the
return of private and public property, including artwork, to victims of
Nazi pillaging who can prove they are the rightful owners.
Taylor's lawyers say Mauthner voluntarily sold the painting, which
depicts the asylum where van Gogh lived toward the end of his life.
Citing a German art book, they said Mauthner owned more than one van
Gogh painting and sold her last one in 1933 to finance her family's move
from Germany to South Africa.
According to Taylor's court documents, the painting passed to German art
dealer Marcel Goldschmidt, and then to art collector Alfred Wolf, before
being auctioned in 1963. That year, Taylor's father, Francis Taylor,
bought the painting on his daughter's behalf for $257,600.
Robert Levy, a Beverly Hills appraiser, said it could go as high as $15
million today.
"It would certainly fare well in today's auction market," Levy said.
"This painting is a most desirable work from the last year of the
artist's life."
Many people have sued to recover artwork taken from their European
ancestors by Nazis, who stole an estimated 600,000 artworks between 1933
and 1945. About 100,000 museum-quality pieces are still missing.
In May, a Virginia museum returned a Nazi-confiscated painting to the
heir of art collector Julius Priester.
In June, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowed a Los Angeles woman to sue
the Austrian government for the return of six Gustav Klimt paintings the
Nazis took from her uncle.
http://news.findlaw.com/ap_stories/e/1402/7-3-2004/20040703154502_10.html