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Van Gogh’s $200M Painting, ‘The Night Cafe,’ To Remain At Yale, U.S. Supreme Court Rules

By Joanna Jaguar
Published on: 03:51 PST, Mar 29, 2016

Monday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Pierre Konowaloff — great-grandson of Ivan Morozov, a wealthy Russian Textile Merchant in the early 1900s — against Yale University that claimed the Vincent van Gogh painting “The Night Cafe” rightfully belonged to him. The van Gogh painting was originally in the possession of Morozov, but was allegedly taken from him by Lenin’s Bolsheviks in 1918, along with many other precious works of art that Morozov had accumulated.

Ivan Morozov owned several cotton mills at the beginning of the twentieth century, and was well established in the Russian textile industry. A wealthy man, Morozov’s favorite pastime was travelling to Paris, and purchasing famed works of arts from Parisian galleries. By 1918, Lenin’s Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party had seized control of Russia’s government, and had already begun their nationalization of civilians’ personal collections of art works for their “Museum of Modern Western.” At that time, Morozov’s own collection — which included works from such renowned artists as van Gogh, Cezanne, and Renoir, among others — had already gained worldwide attention, and the Bolsheviks set their sights on it. Morozov had initially planned to donate his collection to to the city of Moscow, reports the Washington Post, and was “heartbroken” when the government took state ownership of it all, including “The Night Cafe” by Vincent van Gogh.

Eventually, van Gogh’s painting found its way into the collection of Yale alumnus Stephen Carlton Clark, who then bequeathed the work to the Yale University Art Gallery, where it has hung since 1961. In 2008, Pierre Konowaloff learned that his great-grandfather’s van Gogh was in the possession of the Yale art gallery, and so he sought to retrieve the van Gogh, which he believed rightfully belonged to his family, so that it may be returned to Russia to hang in Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, where what is left of Morozov’s collection is now housed, Konowaloff told the Moscow Times.

“I am fighting for the memory of my great grandfather. I want ‘The Night Cafe’ returned to its rightful place, because I know just how much my great grandfather missed his collection.”

In 2009, Yale sued Konowaloff in order to block him from claiming the van Gogh. In 2014, Konowaloff tried once again to reclaim the van Gogh, which he believed was wrongfully expropriated by the Russian government, but a federal judge in that case cited the act of state doctrine, which states that the U.S. courts cannot question the actions of foreign governments — except, in the case of artwork and property seized by the Nazis, which, due to an exception called the Bernstein exception, that allows the government to undo “forced transfers of property perpetrated by Hitler’s regime,” according to the Washington Post. Konowaloff’s case was rejected.

According to the Hartford Courant, Konowaloff appealed his case for his great-grandfather’s van Gogh to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court once again rejected the case without comment. Officials for Yale said they were pleased with the ruling, stating that had Konowaloff won the case for the van Gogh, it would have set a dangerous precedent for others to claim ownership of other precious works of art.

“[Yale] argued that the ownership of art and other goods valued at tens of billions of dollars could be questioned if Konowaloff were allowed to take the [van Gogh].”

Konowaloff’s lawyers said they were shocked that the court didn’t show any consideration for their argument regarding the van Gogh, and went so far as to say Yale “stands in the shoes of an embezzler.”

Vincent van Gogh’s 1888 oil painting “The Night Cafe” shows the inside of Café de la Gare, a small cafe in Arles, France, that van Gogh used to frequent while living in Arles in 1888.

[Open Access Image via Yale University]

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