Christie’s year-long scheme takes a fresh look at restitution

Christie’s has launched a year-long programme concerning restitution, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the Washington Principles, an agreement signed by more than 40 countries to support the return of Nazi-looted art.

Events kick off in the auction house’s Paris galleries this week with a public exhibition of works by French artist Raphaël Denis (until February 10), who sources frames with the exact dimensions of missing paintings and fills them with black voids, physically restaging their loss. “The aim is to educate collectors, buyers and the general public on the issue but also on the Holocaust,” says Richard Aronowitz, global head of restitution at Christie’s.

The line-up includes Los Angeles lawyer E Randol Schoenberg, who worked on the legal battle over a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt (depicted in the 2015 film Woman in Gold). A conference in Tel Aviv in December will look at “how the [Washington] principles will need to adapt to remain relevant for the future”.

Underlining the relevance of the topic was the Sotheby’s announcement that it will be selling a restituted panel by Edvard Munch, “Dance on the Beach” (1939), which was hidden from the Nazis in a barn before its owner, Curt Glaser, was forced to sell it. The work will be sold in London on March 1, with an estimate of £12mn-£20mn and a proportion of the proceeds headed to Glaser’s descendants.

Two lawsuits have been filed against the artificial intelligence platform Stability AI, alleging copyright infringement. The first is a class-action suit from US-based artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Oritz. The claim alleges that the use of open-source images to “train” the software’s creation of new images “violate[s] the rights of millions of artists”. Platforms Midjourney and DeviantArt are also named on the suit.

In the same week, Getty Images filed a claim against Stability AI in London’s High Court and published a press statement confirming that while it “believes artificial intelligence has the potential to stimulate creative endeavours”, it thought there had been an infringement of intellectual property rights. Stability AI said in relation to the class-action suit that its allegations “represent a misunderstanding of how generative AI technology works and the law surrounding copyright”. It also said it would “respond accordingly” to Getty, having reviewed the documents.

Such legal headaches do not seem to be dissuading digital initiatives, including the latest from Susannah Maybank, former head of digital at Gagosian: last week she launched a platform focused on generative art, called Tonic.xyz.

All eyes are on Europe this week as Belgium’s key art and antiques fair, Brafa, opens (January 29-February 5). The 68th edition restores the event to regularity following lockdown closures, a trial run of a summer edition in 2022 and its move to Brussels Expo last year, following 19 years at Tour & Taxis. “There was a real demand from dealers, visitors and the market in general for a return to the January date,” says Beatrix Bourdon, its managing director.

The fair is known for its strength in Oceanic and African art, so items such as the 19th-century Chiwara Headdress (from the Bougouni region in Mali) on offer at Dalton Somaré are likely to impress the event’s committed collectors. Fresh-to-market examples by Belgian artists are also expected to sell well, including “London by Night” (1917) by Emile Claus, at Harold t’Kint de Roodenbeke gallery (priced around €50,000).

Meanwhile, Paris’s Artcurial auction house has announced that it will be offering an original cover drawing for a Tintin comic, created for the third volume of the In America series. Drawn by Belgian cartoonist Hergé in 1942, the work will be sold on February 10, with a €2.2mn-€3.2mn estimate.

Simon Dickinson’s son, Milo Dickinson, is joining the gallery as managing director. He leaves Christie’s, where he worked for 12 years, most recently as head of private sales in the Old Masters department. His appointment will help fill the void left by Emma Ward, who moved last September to set up a dealership in conjunction with Old Masters specialist, Fabrizio Moretti.

“This feels like a transitional moment in the private art market where a lot of the older generations of dealers, particularly in the Old Master and Impressionist markets, are close to retiring and it is an opportune moment for Dickinson to make this transition,” says Milo, in which he also confirms that the gallery will “immediately expand” to include Old Master sculpture. The team are taking a rediscovered work by Anthony van Dyck, “Saint Jerome in the Wilderness”, thought to have been created in 1617 when the painter was just 17 or 18 years old, to Tefaf this March.

Philip Mould & Company announced its own rediscovery last week, having purchased what the team believe is “one of the very earliest depictions of an interracial family relationship in American art”. “A Portrait of Two Girls” was bought for just under $1mn at Christie’s last week, against a $100,000 top estimate.

“Judkin [the consignor] may have seen this as an attractive and unusual artefact, but little more, as did the art market when it sold after his death in 1995,” says Mould, who will undertake further research into the work. “What has exponentially changed since then are advances in black studies and iconography, particularly in recent years.” 

Opulence abounds as Sotheby’s announces the Paris sale of a single-owner collection from Normandy’s Château du Champ de Bataille, on May 16. The château’s owner, Jacques Garcia, is known for kitting out some of the world’s most luxurious hotels, including La Mamounia in Marrakesh, 35 rooms of 18th-century French furniture for the Louvre and, for fans of TV satire The White Lotus, the villa in Palermo (which, off-screen, is actually in Noto).

“Garcia is not only a designer but a collector and connoisseur,” says Mario Tavella, president of Sotheby’s France. Seventy-five lots on offer, spanning French furniture, porcelain and art, are accompanied by impressive provenances with links to Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and the Duke of Orléans. The total estimate is “in the region of €12mn” with proceeds headed towards the estate’s restoration.

Christie’s is offering up its own share of exuberance with its An Opulent Aesthetic sale from an anonymous English country home on February 9. Lots include a Savonnerie carpet fragment (est £40,000-£60,000) from a larger piece commissioned by Louis XIV in 1661 for the Grande Galerie floors of the Louvre, although the majesty’s subsequent move to Versailles meant they were never installed.

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