A Chicago woman will settle a legal dispute over her Pablo Picasso painting by paying US$6.5 million to the grandson of a Jewish woman who lost it to Nazis during World War II, attorneys said on Tuesday.
Marilynn Alsdorf decided she would rather pay Thomas Bennigson of Oakland than continue a costly and complicated legal dispute over the 1922 oil painting, her attorney Richard Chapman said. She will keep the painting, now valued at more than US$12 million, and will sell it after the settlement is approved by a federal judge.
Alsdorf and her late husband bought the painting, known as Femme en blanc (Woman in White), for US$375,000 in 1975. It was sitting in the window of a New York gallery, Chapman said.
PHOTO: AP
"This was a reputable dealer, not a back-alley thing," Chapman said. "She had no knowledge that there had been any impropriety at all."
When Alsdorf tried to sell the painting in 2002, experts notified the Art Loss Register in London, which investigated its history.
Bennigson's Jewish grandmother, Carlota Landsberg, entrusted the painting to a Paris art dealer for safekeeping when she fled Berlin in the late 1930s. When Nazis reached Paris, they took the Picasso.
Its whereabouts were unknown until New York art dealer Stephen Hahn purchased it in France in 1975 and sold it to the Alsdorfs. Hahn recently settled a separate suit by agreeing to pay Bennigson, Landsberg's only living heir, an amount equal to his profit from that sale, said E. Randol Schoenberg, Bennigson's attorney.
The federal government in October claimed jurisdiction over the Alsdorf case and custody of the painting, but allowed it to remain in a safe in her home.
Chapman said Alsdorf's decision was not based on the legal merits of the case.
"It was considering her age and her own personal feelings," he said. "It's tough when you have to foot the bill of very expensive and long-term litigation which has tremendous implications."
Schoenberg said Bennigson, who did not return a message seeking comment, was satisfied.
"It's the right thing," he said. "You like to see in these type of cases things result without litigation and paintings returned to the prior owners, but when there's a dispute -- and this one was hotly disputed -- it's good to get that type of finality of a settlement."
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese