Wildenstein Lawsuits

Doreen Carvajal and Carol Vogel have an interesting piece in the NY Times about Wildenstein & Company and the Wildenstein Institute, the large multi-generational gallery with locations in Paris, New York and Tokyo.

The article details some of the current legal issues and lawsuits, as well as family conflicts and gallery history. Many of the issues revolve around the possible ownership and possession of Nazi looted art and the possible connection of the Wildenstein family to the Nazi party during World War II (although denied by the family). Guy Wildenstein has been called to Paris to face French fraud investigators.

The article is very interesting to read and contains accusations and denials. All going to show that "truth is stranger than fiction".

For many old French families the Wildensteins were more than dealers. They were trusted advisers and confidants with friendships that endured for generations. They offered discreet services and the use of their vaults to store valuable paintings when clients were away.

But descendants of those collectors said that this practice led to problems in tracking their holdings. “Collectors store their paintings in the vault like a bank, but there are problems when the art collector dies late in life,” said Serge Lewisch, a lawyer who represents two clients who have claims on artworks seized by investigators at the Wildenstein Institute.

Alexandre Bronstein, great-great-nephew of Julie Reinach, a wealthy art collector, has searched for years for works plundered from her collection in 1941 by the Nazis who torched the family home in St.-Germain-en-Laye. The police raid on the Wildenstein Institute uncovered a missing bronze by the Italian sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti and two Degas drawings that Mr. Bronstein said belonged to his family, and he promptly filed a criminal lawsuit inquiry.

He said he suspected there were more of his family’s missing artworks involved, and said the motivation for his lawsuit was basic: “People are lying, and we want to find the truth.”

Yves Rouart, nephew and heir of the art collector Anne-Marie Rouart, has been battling the Wildensteins in the French courts for years for the return of artworks from Mrs. Rouart’s collection after her death in 1993. She donated part of her collection and property to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, on the advice of Daniel Wildenstein. But she left her luxury apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine, with its furnishings, to Mr. Rouart.

His legal pursuit began when he said that he had discovered that as many as 40 paintings — including works by Degas, Manet and the Morisot painting of the Normandy cottage — were removed from the walls during the settlement of her estate. Guy Wildenstein was one of the two executors. Twenty-four of those artworks, a Corot among them, turned up in Switzerland in 1997 in a Swiss safe rented by François Daulte, an Impressionist expert and the father of Olivier Daulte, another co-executor.

In the January raid on the Wildenstein Institute, another missing Morisot painting was discovered by the police, who alerted Mr. Rouart. He has filed a new criminal complaint — under the French legal system it is first filed against an unnamed person, “X” — while an inquiry determines how the painting came to be at the Wildenstein Institute. The Académie des Beaux-Arts filed a similar complaint involving the Morisot cottage painting in which it also claims an interest because of Mrs. Rouart’s donation.

To read the complete NY Times article, click HERE.