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A US federal appeals court has ordered a Detroit museum to hold onto an 1888 painting by Vincent van Gogh amid a dispute between a Brazilian collector and the museum over the painting.
Wednesday’s order from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati came days after U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh in Detroit dismissed a lawsuit filed by art collector Gustavo Soter’s brokerage firm, The Detroit News reported.
The suit claims Soter bought a painting of a woman with a book, titled “The Novel Reader,” in 2017 for $3.7 million, but a “third party” took the artwork and it has been missing for nearly six years.
The oil on canvas painting, which the suit says is worth more than $5 million, is part of the Detroit Institute of Arts’ new “Van Gogh in America” exhibit.
Steeh said on January 20 ruled that the painting could not be seized because it is protected by federal law granting immunity to foreign works of art on display in the United States.
An appeals court judge ordered the museum to keep the painting, saying the appeal filed by Soter’s brokerage firm, Brokerarte Capital Partners, LLC, “raises issues in his motion that deserve full appeal and consideration.”
Detroit Institute of Arts spokeswoman Megan Hawthorne said in an email that the museum “will comply with the order from the US Court of Appeals regarding the custody of ‘The Novel Reader’ and will respond by January 30 to the new plaintiff’s request.”
He said the museum had “no additional comment before the court’s decision.”
Attorneys for Soter filed a lawsuit in early January, seeking a court order directing the museum to hand over the painting.
A months-long van Gogh exhibit ends Sunday at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Dozens of paintings by Dutch masters are on loan to the museum.
The museum did not publicly disclose how it acquired the painting for the show, saying only that it came from Brazil. The painting was not listed as stolen by the FBI or the International Art Loss Register, the museum said.
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