Free Republic

The legal heirs of a German Jewish banker who was forced to sell his art collection to avoid persecution by the Nazis are suing a Japanese holding company to reclaim ownership of a painting by Vincent van Gogh. Three heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, based in New York and Germany, filed a lawsuit on December 13 in an Illinois district court against Sompo Holdings, an insurance company based in Japan, to dispute its legal title to the painting Sunflowers (1888). The claim states that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a “casualty” of Nazi-era policies and economic sanctions that forced him to sell his...

A Claude Monet painting from his celebrated "Meules" (Haystacks) series fetched $110.7 million in New York on Tuesday in an auction record for the French Impressionist master. The sale at Sotheby's -- the first time the work had come to auction since 1986 -- fetched one of the 10 highest prices ever seen at auction. The total, which includes fees and the commission, was more than 44 times the previous record for the work.

Yesterday we went to an exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Art. It was a Claude Monet show exhibiting work from his time in Argenteuil where he developed his impressionistic style (Monet: Framing Life) in combination with a Frederic Church show of his paintings from his time spent traveling the Middle East (Church: A Painter’s Pilgrimage). The Monet show was small, but lovely.Rounded Flower Bed (Corbeille de fleurs), 1876, Claude MonetIt was blessedly free of social commentary, which cannot be said of the Church exhibit which contained subject matter and imagery that curators and art historians found to reek of...

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is being called "racist" after it encouraged visitors to dress in a kimono to celebrate Claude Monet's 1876 painting "La Japonaise." The painting contains a woman dressed in a kimono: A group called "Stand Against Yellow-Face @ the MFA" has planned a protest for tomorrow at six o'clock. According to Stand Against Yellow-Face, "There is no education from curators or staff on the painting itself, nor the "orientalism" that was ocurring [sic] at the time, nor is there any sort of education on the kimono itself. "The act of non-Japanese museum staff throwing these...

The French painter Claude Monet is being used as an environmental monitor, for scientists believe his legendary paintings of the Houses of Parliament can serve as a useful indicator of smog levels in late 19th-century London. Monet's so-called London series was painted during visits between 1899 and 1905, capturing scenes that are often astonishing for their grey and purplish haze. Many experts have assumed, though, that this extraordinary effect was an Impressionistic embellishment. Environmental researchers at the University of Birmingham in central England analyzed nine out of 19 Monet paintings of the Houses of Parliament, painted between 1899 and 1901....