A painting by Vincent Van Gogh on display at the Detroit museum is the subject of a complaint from a Brazilian collector claiming it is his.
Was the “Novel Reader” stolen? A US judge on Wednesday banned a museum in Detroit, in the north of the 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”.
Bought $3.7 million
“The complainant had been unaware of her whereabouts for years” before she appeared in this American museum, the complaint adds. 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 Reader,” painted in 1888, was purchased for $3.7 million in May 2017 and is now worth “more than five million dollars.”
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” sold for $117.1 million in November in New York.
