Claude Monet's Haystacks Painting Breaks Records At Auction & More Art World Headlines

The following are summaries of news reports pertaining to art law and art markets, organized by geographic regions for your browsing convenience. Wilson Elser's Art Law practice team will transition this service to our new Art Law Blog, due to launch in the near future.

UNITED STATES Claude Monet's Haystacks Painting Sets a New World Record for the First Impressionist Work to Sell for More than $100 Million at Auction The Meules (Haystacks) painting (1890), part of the Haystacks series by the celebrated French Impressionist Claude Monet, is one of the most recognized images in art history. Last week, the work sold at an auction in New York, breaking records for the most expensive work by the artist ever sold and for the most expensive Impressionist painting.

The Art Newspaper: Monet's glowing haystacks set alight Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern art sale with a new £97m record BBC: Monet Haystacks painting sells for record $110.7m California Judge Rules That Spanish Museum Has Good Title to Disputed Pissarro Work A Los Angeles court has ruled, after a 15-year legal battle, that Spain's Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection can keep a Camille Pissarro work, Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie (1897), claimed to have been stolen by the Nazis. The painting's original owners had traded the painting for their visa to escape Nazi Germany in 1939. The court, applying Spanish law, determined that the museum had obtained good title to the work because there was no way that the museum could have known that it was stolen.

NPR: Jewish Family Loses Legal Battle to Recover Painting Stolen by Nazis Virginia Court Rules that Two of Charlottesville's Confederate Statues Are War Memorials In 2017, Charlottesville's City Council voted to remove a statue depicting Confederate General Robert E. Lee, a decision that sparked a protest rally in Charlottesville that turned deadly and a national debate as to the fate of Confederate monuments. Since the protest, the City Council voted to remove the statue of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. A lawsuit challenging the City Council's decisions followed; one of the arguments raised was based on a 1904 law giving the power to remove war memorials to the state as opposed to local governments that may have authorized the building of the war memorial. In ruling on a motion for a partial summary judgment, the court held that the statues are protected by the state's law as war memorials. Other legal issues raised by...