Elizabeth Taylor fights for disputed Van Gogh

[CliffB]

Elizabeth Taylor fights for Van Gogh painting
Thu 27 May, 2004 03:55

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Film legend Elizabeth Taylor has asked a judge to
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 catalogue 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 (140,000 pounds) 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 Two 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.

[Volfie "Gen. Disarray" Jackson]

> "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.

You tell 'em, La Liz. This is bullshit.

Giselle (my family had The Mona Lisa stolen from them in the foothills of
the lesser Alps by a wanding band of rogue goat herders but did I ever
whine about it? Noooooo... hey, waitaminute...)