What Ever Happened to Angel Fernández de Soto?

When Christie's withdrew Pablo Picasso's portrait of Angel Fernández de Soto just hours before its evening sale of impressionist and modern art last November, it became the scandal of the fall auction season. An eleventh-hour restitution claim had ensnared the sale's star lot, expected to bring $40 million - $60 million, in a legal battle. The painting has since quietly disappeared from the public eye, but this afternoon a court was set to decide whether or not The Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation, which consigned the piece to raise money for charitable purposes, could continue with the sale. Details to come.

On the Friday prior to Christie's Wednesday, November 8th sale, Julius Schoeps, an heir to the portrait's original owner, filed suit in U.S. District Court claiming rightful ownership. The Nazis, Schoeps argued, had forced his great uncle, the Jewish banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, to sell the Picasso when they destroyed his fortune. Although the judge refused to block the sale on account of a jurisdictional technicality, Christie's decided to pull the evening's headliner, contending that while the sale was a legal transaction, a cloud of doubt had been cast upon the painting.

Picasso and Fernández de Soto became friends in Barcelona, and the artist's portrait of the dandy, also known as The Absinthe Drinker, is regarded as one of the most important works from his Blue Period. It depicts Fernández de Soto in a moment of introspection characteristic of the moody works the artist painted between 1902 and 1904. Lloyd Webber acquired the piece from Sotheby's New York in 1995 for just over $29 million.