(Washington) The novel reader was it stolen? A US judge on Wednesday banned a museum in Detroit, in the northern United States, from moving a painting by Van Gogh, a Brazilian collector claiming to have been illegally dispossessed of the work.
The painting, a woman in blue tones immersed in full reading on a library background, is on display at the Detroit Institute of Art on the occasion of an exhibition devoted until January 22 to the impressionist painter.
But, in a complaint filed Tuesday before the American courts and consulted by AFP, its presumed owner, the Brazilian Gustavo Soter via his fund named Brokerarte, affirms that after having bought the canvas in 2017 and having entrusted it with custody – without right of ownership – to a “third party”, the latter “volatilized with the painting”.
“The complainant had been unaware of her whereabouts for years” before she appeared in this American museum, adds the complaint. The presumed owner therefore asked the courts to take advantage of this exposure to regain full control.
A Michigan federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Detroit Institute of Art, a major museum, not to touch the painting, therefore not to move it, and scheduled a hearing on the merits for January 19, three days before the closing of the exhibition.
According to the complaint, A novel readerpainted in 1888, was bought for $3.7 million in May 2017 and today is said to be worth “more than $5 million”.
Contacted Thursday by AFP, the museum did not respond immediately.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), painter of Dutch origin living in France, is one of the leaders of the Impressionist movement and one of the most highly rated painters in the world. His Orchard with cypresses was thus sold for 117.1 million dollars in November in New York.