Even after 11 years in court and what many thought was a definitive ruling in New York last month, the collector David Nahmad is still out to prove that his Amedeo Modigliani painting was not seized from the Jewish dealer Oscar Stettiner by the Nazis. Nahmad’s lawyers have filed a motion to review the case based on eyewitness testimony that they claim attests to this all being a huge misunderstanding. Nahmad aims to prove that Modigliani’s Seated Man with a Cane (1918)—which he bought in 1996 for $3.2m, and is now worth an estimated $30m—is not the work Stettiner’s heirs have been searching for.
“The motion is based on affirmations submitted by eyewitnesses who have provided firsthand information that will make it clear that Mondex wrongfully identified Seated Man with a Cane as the work that the estate of Oscar Stettiner should be pursuing for restitution,” reads a statement from Nahmad’s lawyers provided to The Art Newspaper. Mondex, a company that helps find and restitute Nazi-looted art, worked closely with Stettiner’s grandson on the case.
Following media coverage of the ruling in April, “two witnesses have come forward who have personally seen the painting that was in the possession of the Van der Klip family”, the statement continues, referencing the family that bought the Nazi-looted work in 1944 and sold it at auction 50 years later. “They have identified the painting as completely different from Seated Man with a Cane. The painting they saw does not show a man seated and does not even depict a cane. It is much smaller than Seated Man with a Cane.”
The statement goes on to argue that Mondex made a mistake in identifying the painting in Nahmad’s possession as having once belonged to Stettiner. As proof, it points to a court document from the 1940s, when Stettiner himself filed a claim to recover his painting after the defeat of the Nazis.
“A 1946 certified report of the French bailiff describes the painting at issue as ‘a painting depicting painter Modigliani, painted by the same’. Seated Man with a Cane is not a self-portrait,” reads the statement. “The report also identified the other paintings that Oscar Stettiner had reported missing were ‘of no interest to him’.”
Nahmad’s lawyers further argue that, according to Marc Restellini’s recently published catalogue raisonné on Modigliani, Seated Man with a Cane was never owned by Stettiner in the first place.
Reached for comment, Restellini tells The Art Newspaper that when the catalogue raisonné was finalised around two years ago, “we had no certainty about the Van der Klip provenance. It was cited from unverified sources but did not seem very convincing to me. This is why the Van der Klip provenance is in italics in my catalogue.” He adds that he had “already contributed significantly to the study” of Seated Man with a Cane by identifying its sitter as the chocolate merchant Georges Menier.
“The Nahmad family recently consulted me regarding the painting's provenance,” Restellini says. “I expressed my serious doubts about Van der Klip and, above all, suggested a very thorough investigation into the Stettiner case, which undeniably presents many unanswered questions.” He adds that he thinks Nahmad and his legal team want to commission “an in-depth study on the provenance of this work. I indicated that this research would obviously be conducted according to strict professional standards, with complete objectivity, considering both sides of the argument and with the sole aim of uncovering the historical truth. We are now awaiting their commitment.”
