Yale fights to keep Van Gogh masterpiece

The Ivy League university has gone to court in Connecticut to assert its ownership rights over The Night Café and to prevent a descendant of the original owner claiming the 1888 canvas.

Pierre Konowaloff, who lives in France, is alleged to be the great-grandson of industrialist and aristocrat Ivan Morozov, who owned the painting in 1918.

Russia nationalised Mr Morozov's property during the Communist revolution, and the painting, which the Soviet government later sold, has been hanging in Yale's Art Gallery since 1961.

The university says Mr Konowaloff has claimed ownership and has said he wants title transferred to the Russian state and to receive compensation.

Mr Konowaloff claims the Soviet nationalisation of property was illegal, so title never passed from his great-grandfather, according to Yale.

Paintings taken by the Soviet government figure in the collections of institutions throughout the world, says the lawsuit. But the nationalisation did not violate international laws.

The lawsuit says: "It was accepted at the time, as it is now, that sales by the Soviet government were valid, as were later acquisitions of the paintings."

Yale received the painting in a bequest from Stephen Carlton Clark, a graduate who founded the Baseball Hall of Fame.