A lawsuit regarding the return of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” was dismissed

Earlier this month, a federal court dismissed a lawsuit against Japanese company Sompo Holdings over Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers (1888), which, according to the heirs of a German Jewish banker, was looted by the Nazis.

The company purchased the work from Christie’s London in 1987 for a then-record $39.9 million. The heirs of the previous owner, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, tried to get it back, maintaining that it had been stolen during World War II.

According to Art Gazette, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s heirs claimed that Sompo Holdings ignored potential problems regarding the work’s provenance. However, a judge in Illinois dismissed the case due to lack of jurisdiction over the Tokyo-based holding company.

The lawsuit was filed in Illinois in part because Sompo does business in that state and also because the photo was part of the 2001 exhibition “Van Gogh and Gauguin: Studio of the South.” at the Art Institute of Chicago. During negotiations with the Sompo Museum in Tokyo, a museum official allegedly told the Art Institute that there were doubts about the work’s origins and that although they believed Sunflowers they had nothing to do with the art looted by the Nazis, “they weren’t 100% sure about it.”

According to the complaint filed in December 2022, the heirs claim that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy “never intended to donate any of his paintings and was only forced to do so due to threats and economic pressure from the Nazi government.”

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy sold the painting in 1934, and a year later he died of natural causes. He lost both his job and his bank under Hitler’s rule, and the lack of contemporaneous sales records makes it unclear whether Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was forced to sell the work for less than it was worth.

The plaintiffs, Julius H. Schoeps, Britt-Marie Enhoerning and Florence von Kesselstatt, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of more than 30 additional beneficiaries, sought recovery of the $250 million painting along with $750 million in punitive damages.

Sunflowers belongs to a group of three such paintings by Van Gogh created in 1888 and 1889. The other two are in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the National Gallery in London.