The Associated Press reports on today’s settlement over Boy Leading A Horse and Le Moulin de la Galette:
Two famed early works by Pablo Picasso will stay in New York City museums after the institutions reached an out-of-court settlement over a lawsuit alleging the previous owner was forced by the Nazis to sell his artworks in the 1930s.
The settlement was announced in Manhattan federal court on Monday as the case was about to go to trial. Details of the settlement were not released.
The museums had denied that the paintings were obtained under Nazi duress.
The family of a Jewish banker sued the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation for the paintings, Picasso’s “Boy Leading a Horse,” owned by MoMA, and the Guggenheim’s “Le Moulin de la Galette.”
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff concluded last week that the family of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who died in 1935, had produced enough evidence for the case to go to trial.
Picasso Paintings to Stay at NYC Museums (Associated Press)