The heirs of the owners of the Van Gogh painting demanded that it be removed from the Sotheby's auction.
The heirs of a Jewish family demand that Sotheby's cancel the auction of Van Gogh's painting "Blooming Chestnut Trees". According to them, in 1936 the family was forced to sell the work under pressure from the Nazi regime.
According to family lawyer Gunnar Schnabel, the painting was transferred to the art dealer Walter Feildenfeldt in the early 1930s, and the subsequent sale in the Netherlands - Van Gogh's homeland - took place under conditions of coercion and the payment of "special Reich taxes" upon emigration.
Sotheby's said that so far no direct evidence of the coercive nature of the transaction has been found, but expressed its willingness to "constructive interaction" to find a compromise.