Sotheby’s auction of $180m Van Gogh challenged over claims it was ‘sold under duress’

Leading global auction house Sotheby’s has announced it is entering good-faith negotiations with representatives of the Fischer family, former German owners of a rare 19th-century Vincent van Gogh masterpiece, to resolve a contested ownership dispute just days before the work was scheduled to hit the New York auction block. Titled *Châtaigniers en fleurs* (Blossoming Chestnut Trees), the vibrant 1889 oil on canvas carries a pre-sale valuation of $180 million (£136 million), and was originally slated for sale on Wednesday as the crown jewel of the prestigious Blaquier-Arrieta Collection.
The dispute was raised publicly by legal representatives for the Fischer family’s descendants, who allege the iconic post-impressionist work was sold under coercive circumstances in the years leading up to World War II, amid the Nazi regime’s systematic persecution of Jewish business owners and widespread expropriation of assets across Germany. The family’s legal counsel, in correspondence first reported by the New York Times, argues that the Fischer publishing empire, owned by prominent German publisher Samuel Fischer, suffered crippling financial losses under Nazi discriminatory policies, forcing the family to part with the Van Gogh against their will while the work was held in Amsterdam in the early 1930s.
Sotheby’s confirmed in an official public statement shared with the BBC that its in-house provenance team had completed years of exhaustive archival research tracing the full ownership chain of the painting back to its creation in 1890, and found no documented evidence to corroborate the heirs’ duress sale claims. The auction house’s public provenance records show Samuel Fischer acquired the work in 1909, two decades before the Nazi party rose to national power, and that after Fischer’s death in 1934, the piece passed through a sequence of verified private owners, including Paris-based collectors Henriette and Marcel Kapferer in 1936, before landing in the private Blaquier-Arrieta collection that consigned it for the upcoming sale.
Despite the lack of supporting evidence in its own research, Sotheby’s emphasized that it treats art restitution and provenance transparency as core institutional priorities, and has already opened constructive, ongoing dialogue with the Fischer family’s representatives to pursue a mutually agreeable outcome, rather than moving forward with the high-stakes auction as planned. The BBC has reached out to the legal counsel representing the Fischer heirs for additional comment on the ongoing negotiations.