Thank you, bubbe.
Those are the words that might have been echoing through the mind of Oakland lawyer Thomas Bennigson earlier this month, when he received a $6.5 million settlement for a Pablo Picasso portrait once owned by his grandmother and later looted by the Nazis.
The settlement over “Femme en Blanc” was announced last week by Bennigson’s lawyer, E. Randol Schoenberg, and was the result of almost three years of complex, back-and-forth litigation.
It all started in 2001, when Bennigson, 47, then a law student at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, was informed that a painting once owned by his Berlin-born grandmother, Carlota Landsberg, was about to be sold by Chicago philanthropist Marilynn Alsdorf in Los Angeles; until that point he’d had no idea of the painting’s existence, let alone that his family owned it.
Bennigson filed a $10 million suit in December 2002. His case was twice dismissed, Alsdorf filed suit in Illinois to declare her ownership of the portrait and the federal government subsequently filed a forfeiture action, claiming the 1922 Picasso was stolen property transported across state lines.
Eventually, with the help of a federal magistrate, the two sides hammered out a settlement Schoenberg considers the best ever received by an owner or heir of Nazi-looted art.
“Estimates are [the painting] could be worth $6 million, $8 million, $10 million or $12 million. I figure it’s somewhere in the $8 million-to-$10 million range. That makes the settlement worth about 70 to 80 percent of the value,” said the Los Angeles-based attorney.
“In terms of litigated Nazi-looted art settlements, it’s probably the best ever in terms of the total dollar amount and the percentage of value of the original painting.”
Alsdorf and her now-deceased husband, James, purchased the 25-by-21-inch painting in New York in the mid-1970s for $345,000. Dealer Stephen Hahn had picked up the portrait from a French dealer, but, prior to that, nobody knew the whereabouts of “Femme en Blanc” for roughly 35 years, said Schoenberg.
Hahn has settled a separate lawsuit by agreeing to pay Bennigson an amount equal to the profit he earned from the sale of “Femme en Blanc” 30 years ago, Schoenberg noted.
The Alsdorfs hung the painting in their Chicago apartment, and Marilynn Alsdorf pondered selling it upon her husband’s death. When an L.A.-area dealer sent it to a European dealer for appraisal, it was discovered that the Picasso was on the Art Loss Register of looted works.
Prior to fleeing Berlin, Landsberg had sent the portrait to a French art dealer, whose home was subsequently raided by the Nazis. She attempted to locate the painting up until her death in New York about 11 years ago.
Bennigson could not be reached for comment.