Restitution claims

A group of restituted paintings were among the highlights of a robust series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions in London.

The Kunstmuseum Bern’s announcement that it would accept the Gurlitt bequest (aside from any Nazi-looted art) has been followed by a pledge by Germany’s culture minister to return the disputed Matisse and other works to the families of their original owners.

The Jane Austen’s House Museum at Chawton in Hampshire has raised the £150,000 needed to keep a gold turquoise ring once owned by Jane Austen in the country.

FOLLOWING the confidential settlement made between The Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation and the heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Picasso’s 1903 portrait of his friend Angel Fernandez de Soto will be offered for sale at Christie’s in London on June 23 with an estimate of £30-40m.

AN agreement over the disputed Blue Period Picasso painting The Absinthe Drinker may well lead to a clearer legal definition of what constitutes art sold under Nazi duress.

SPECIALIST New York lawyer Charles Goldstein and academic Mara Wantuch will be exploring the issue of Holocaust-related assets in a seminar at the Notre Dame Law Centre in London on November 19.

Feeding frenzy sets new record as bidders get their fill despite absence of Lloyd Webber Picasso

CHRISTIE’S are hoping to generate up to $140m for the four remaining works by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) that were part of the high-profile Bloch-Bauer restitution case.

CHRISTIE’s have announced that they are to sell the four remaining works by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) that were part of the high profile Bloch-Bauer restitution case.

Understandably, the Russians left this one behind when they liberated the Reichstag in 1945, but a Tommy NCO with a sense of humour decided to rescue this beleaguered portrait of the First World War German Field Marshall and Weimar president Paul von Hindenburg, right, from the ruins and take him back to the West Country.

FRANCE: A Paris court has granted a temporary injunction placing a Cézanne painting currently on show at a city museum under legal supervision pending an inquiry into its ownership.

THE Art-Law Centre of Switzerland is holding an international symposium, entitled Claims for the Restitution of Looted Art, at the Museum of Art and History in Geneva on November 10.

UK: THE Culture Select Committee investigating the illicit trade of cultural goods has stopped short of demanding tough legislation that might inadvertently harm legitimate business.

UK: THE panel looking into whether UK collections and institutions should return Nazi looted art to its original owners or compensate them has unveiled the criteria and procedures which will determine its judgements.