HEIRS - Observations on Provenance

LIZ TAYLOR & THE US SUPREME COURT

"The Canadians who claim that Elizabeth Taylor has their great-grandmother's Vincent van Gogh painting are taking their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. A petition filed on Aug. 16 by Andrew Orkin, Mark Orkin and Sarah-Rose Adler states that View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy, painted in 1889, belonged to their great-grandmother Margarethe Mauthner of Berlin, and was taken in the late 1930s under coercion (the family is Jewish). In May, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the California District Court rejected the Orkins' claim, finding that Taylor had acquired the work in good faith years after Mauthner willingly agreed to its sale. The Orkins are pressing on, citing a presumption in U.S. law that all property owned by Jews between 1933 and 1945 in Germany was deemed to have been confiscated by the Nazis, and that any art works from Germany in that period could be of dubious provenance."

This report, by Val Ross at the Globe and Mail, is missing a point. It leaves out the fact that Elizabeth Taylor was awarded her rights to the Van Gogh based ONLY on  statute of limitations. The court didn't find "that Taylor had acquired the work in good faith years after Mauthner willingly agreed to its sale"

It found for  Taylor because time ran out.

Too bad, too late to claim.

In other words, because the court did not give the HEIRS any relief from the Statute of Limitations in California law, they were deprived of their right to have their facts ring true at that hearing. What is absurd is that in the US, a Holocaust claim can be too late in California while in New York the same claim can be heard.

The real likelihood of coercion, the trail after the loss, all were irrelevant to the outcome once the statute of limitations was invoked. So the real loss is the rights of the family to pursue their property because they didn't "get wind" of the painting resurfacing in the 60's when Taylor's father  bought it at auction. Andrew Orkin was 11 years old around that time. Seems unfair that the HEIRS would be shut out.

The facts around the case itself are VERY compelling and if heard at the US Supreme Court, will show that provenance information that Taylor offered when she once tried to sell the painting in 1990, differ from the scholarly published dates that define Mrs. Mauthner's term of ownership. Taylor's 1990 brochure did not disclose that the painting was registered in the two latest (1939 and 1970) catalogues raisonnées as having been owned in Berlin by Mrs. Mauthner in 1937 or later. Instead, the brochure said only that Mauthner "kept the picture until at least 1928."

And the HEIRS have evidence that as late as 1939, the painting had been listed in an internationally published art catalogue as being part of their grandmother’s collection.

So let the truth of the facts of this case be argued, in a court which will recognize the three 1998 federal statutes intended to address the plight of Holocaust victims to facilitate the restitution of property taken from them during the Nazi era.

DEAR LIZ TAYLOR

A Letter from Fern Smiley

Elizabeth Taylor
c/o Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation
P.O. Box 55995
Sherman Oaks, CA 91413-0995

To the Great Actress - Elizabeth Taylor - born in London in 1932:

You are the same age as my mother would have been (see May 9, 2007 Bat Annette posting) and there are some who have said that she held a remarkable resemblance to you (see picture at right). I also know that you are the daughter of an Art Dealer father of Scottish Descent who lived in Kansas City, Missouri and your mother was a Rosemond, also of American-Scottish descent.

In the thirties, your parents moved to England, where you were born. You and your mother left to Hollywood just on the verge of WWII. Your father, Francis, stayed behind. Since your father was a professional Art Dealer, it may be possible that he purchased and sold art treasures previously owned by Jews. This would have been art that was sold at auctions in Germany under duress between 1933 and 1939. This art would have come into Britain any time after 1933, imported by Dealers who were known as reputable. I tend to  believe, however, that they were tainted by persecution and desperation.

Even though he was in Britain, or perhaps Scotland, to trade, Francis A. Taylor would have been aware that the paintings and drawings streaming out of Europe were being sold at fire sale prices. Yet, they were likely legal to purchase, and extraordinary bargains at that; especially at the source in auction houses Germany and Austria, at least until Sept 1,1939 when Britain declared war.