Art institute has brush with law over missing paintings

IN JANUARY, French police investigators entered the regal Parisian building of an art research centre called the Wildenstein Institute and began sifting through a substantial trove of artworks.

It was the third police raid on the institute and at the end of it the investigators carried away armloads of art, including Degas drawings and an Impressionist painting by Berthe Morisot. All had been reported missing or stolen - some by Jewish families whose property was looted by the Nazis, and others by heirs who said their treasures had vanished during the settlement of their family estates.

The seizure of about 30 works has put an uncomfortable focus on the Wildenstein family, a discreet dynasty of French Jewish art dealers stretching back five generations whose name has long been one of the most prestigious in the international art world.

When the first branch of the Wildenstein Gallery opened in Paris in 1875, it quickly gained a reputation for selling old masters and 18th-century French painting and sculptures. By 1942, they had begun to broaden their empire, opening a branch of the gallery in New York. They produced catalogues raisonns for major figures including Monet, Manet and Gauguin. At the centre of the current wave of troubles is Guy Wildenstein, 65, the president of Wildenstein and Company, which operates in New York, Tokyo and Paris.

The family has faced both controversies and lawsuits in the past but never of the number or magnitude of those on the docket now. Last week, Wildenstein was summoned to Paris from New York to face questioning by French anti-fraud investigators who discovered the artworks while investigating money-laundering and tax evasion alleged in a criminal lawsuit against him.

Also seeking answers is the Acadmie des Beaux-Arts, a prestigious French cultural society that has filed a legal complaint seeking an inquiry about a missing painting.

Wildenstein has declined to speak publicly about the inquiry or the suits. Spokesman Matthias Leridon said Wildenstein "will not answer by using the media".

"Let's be calm and quiet and wait for the questions coming from the judges, and after he will express himself," Leridon said, noting that Wildenstein has been called to answer questions at this point as a witness and not as a suspect.

The flurry of legal attacks and the raid was sparked by a criminal lawsuit filed in Paris in September by Wildenstein's stepmother, Sylvia Roth Wildenstein.Before she died in November she fired a last salvo in a fight lasting almost a decade for a larger share of the inheritance from the estate of her husband Daniel Wildenstein who died in 2001.

She accused Guy Wildenstein of tax evasion and money laundering to mask the size of the family fortune by shuffling, for example, the ownership titles of Impressionist paintings, including 19 valuable works by Bonnard, to anonymous trusts in the Bahamas and by storing art in a vault in Geneva beyond the reach of tax authorities.

Investigators acting under orders from the independent magistrate are looking into the tax allegations, but there is no public indication that tax authorities are doing the same. This has lead to questions in the French press about whether the administration of President Nicolas Sarkozy has been less aggressive than it should have been because Guy Wildenstein has close ties to Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement party. He supported the party as a top donor and chief fund-raiser from the United States.

For many old French families the Wildensteins were more than dealers. They were trusted advisers and confidants with friendships that endured for generations. They offered discreet services and the use of their vaults to store valuable paintings when clients were away.

Descendants of those collectors said that this practice led to problems in tracking their holdings. Alexandre Bronstein, great-great-nephew of Julie Reinach, a wealthy art collector, has searched for years for works plundered from her collection in 1941 by the Nazis. The police raid on the Wildenstein Institute uncovered a missing bronze by the Italian sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti and two Degas drawings that Bronstein said belonged to his family. He promptly filed a criminal lawsuit inquiry.

Yves Rouart, nephew and heir of the art collector Anne-Marie Rouart, has been battling the Wildensteins in the French courts for years for the return of artworks from his aunt's collection after her death in 1993.

His legal action began when he said that he had discovered that as many as 40 paintings - including works by Degas, Manet and the Morisot painting of the Normandy cottage - were removed from the walls during the settlement of her estate. Guy Wildenstein was one of the two executors.

In the January raid on the Wildenstein Institute, another missing Morisot painting was discovered by the police, who alerted Rouart. He has filed a new criminal complaint.

The Acadmie des Beaux-Arts filed a similar complaint involving the Morisot cottage painting.

"That particular painting has been in my family's possession since its creation," Rouart said. "My great-grandmother, my grandmother and father would never accept that this work would remain in the possession of a merchant who has no right to it."