Sotheby’s will sell 32 works estimated at $40 million during the Impressionist and Modern sale in New York that Colin Gleadell says in the Telegraph come from the same man who was in a conflict with his bank over a picture put up as collateral that had been sold to a Dutch museum:
According to trade sources, the collection is that of embattled Dutch investor, Louis Reijtenbagh. The son of a farmer, Reijtenbagh worked as a family doctor but made a fortune from trading in stocks in the 1980’s. Last year he was rated as one of Holland’s 50 wealthiest individuals. But recently his business empire has been entangled in a web of debt amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Last May, accompanied by representatives of JP Morgan Chase, which had secured a court order to recover artworks which had been used as collateral for a loan, deputy sheriffs in New York removed an estimated 29 paintings belonging to Reijtenbagh, valued at some $23 million, from an apartment in the Trump Tower.
Art Market News (Telegraph)