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Yale fights to keep Van Gogh masterpiece
Ed Harris25.03.09
Yale University is taking legal action to retain a 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.
Reader views (3)
In my recent blog post http://arttheftcentral.blogspot.com/2009/04/russian-nationalization-of-art.html I excerpt from RT Taylor's discussion on the flow of art across the Atlantic around the time of the Communist Revolution. Certainly, opportunism on both the part of the noveaux riches and art dealers transformed this flow into a flood.
- Mark Durney, Boston, United States
The controlling precedents should be the ones established with respect to the return of Jewish property seized by the Nazis. If Konowaloff can afford adequate legal representation, it should be interesting to watch the courts twist and turn the law to find some way of justifying Yale to keep the stolen property of White Russians while also continuing to justify the return of every art work claimed by the Jewish descendants of Holocaust victims. Politics loom larger than the law in this case. Following the fall of the Berlin wall, there were instances in which countries rejected their prior nationalization and returned properties to their prerevolutionary owners' descendants, especially in eastern Europe, but Russia refused to do so, even stripping White Russians of the Soviet citizenship the SU had used to terrorize and hunt them out of fear of their return, influence and demands for their properties. Apparently Yale is arguing here that U.S. courts should abide by Soviet law--another step on the path to the Sovietization of the USA, and an argument unbefitting a highly capitalist university in a highly capitalist country. Who among us doubts that if it was Yale's property which had been nationalized, Yale would be arguing the reverse? It is not a question of American values, but American la
- Nina, Davis, CA, USA
I understand that the core collection of Washington's national gallery is comprised of art works acquired by US collectors from the Soviet Union during the sales of the 1920s, which in turn were nationalised during the communist revolution. I doubt the US will be interested to return these either.
- John W, Ottawa, Canada
