Christie’s auction house is embroiled in a bitter row over an Impressionist painting it sold as bona fide but which it now transpires was looted by the Nazis and even part of Herman Göring’s private collection. The work’s rightful owners and the dealer who bought the painting from Christie’s have accused the auction house of failing to properly investigate its dark past, and then refusing to rescind the sale once its murky provenance became clear. Next week, the current owner

Christie’s says it is committed to ensuring that artworks looted during World War II are not offered for sale. But one buyer is now asking the auction house to return money he paid a decade ago for a painting recently identified as having been plundered by Nazis in 1940 from a Jewish collector in Paris. Alain Dreyfus, an art dealer in Switzerland who bought the painting, Alfred Sisley’s “First Day of Spring in Moret,” at a 2008 auction in New York City, said that Christie’s d

How long after a sale—and under what circumstances—is a buyer entitled to a refund? That’s the question that has surfaced in a dispute between a Swiss art dealer and Christie’s auction house. The dealer, Alain Dreyfus, wants Christie’s to pay him back for a painting he bought in 2008 that later was determined to have been looted by the Nazis during World War II. The trouble began two years ago, when a Canadian company that specializes in recovering looted assets, Mondex, cont

At the sad record of the Nazi spoliations, this work is certainly not at the top of the list. Neither the most beautiful nor the most expensive. First Day of Spring in Moret, a canvas painted in 1889 by the Impressionist artist Alfred Sisley, was sold at Christie's in New York, in May 2008, for the sum of 350 000 dollars. Far from, for example, the 135 million dollars reached in 2006 by another painting stolen from its Jewish owners, such as the famous Portrait of Adele Bloch