Sale of major paintings marks final chapter in Imelda Marcos art dispute
A long-running dispute came to an end on Sunday at Christie’s impressionist art auction in New York, when two paintings acquired with funds embezzled from taxpayers more than 40 years ago by Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines, were sold to benefit the Republic of the Philippines, following a District Court Order in New York.
The first, Claude Monet’s L’église à Vétheuil (1881), had been bought by Marcos from Marlborough Fine Art in 1975 for $138,000 and, by 1985, had been passed on to her personal secretary, Vilma Bautista, for safekeeping. On Sunday, it was estimated at $1.5 million and sold for $3.1 million (￡2.4 million).
The second, Alfred Sisley’s Langland Bay (1897), had been bought from Marlborough around the same time for $82,000, and passed on to Bautista 10 years later. It was estimated on Sunday at $1 million and sold for $1.1 million.
A third painting owned by Marcos, of cypress trees in North Africa by Albert Marquet, was being sold yesterday, after this column went to press, with a $90,000 estimate.
The Marcos paintings were discovered at two houses in New York after Bautista sold a Monet water lily painting to a London dealer in 2010 for $32 million. However, she failed to declare the sale on her tax returns, and an investigation followed.
The painting was subsequently bought by British hedge-fund manager Alan Howard, who paid the victims’ group $10 million to foreclose legal challenges.
Bautista started a six-year jail sentence in New York last year, while the 89-year-old Marcos, though absent from court, was sentenced last week to 42 years in jail for fraud in the Philippines.
The British Art Fair, which specialises in British art of the 20th century and which has moved to the Saatchi Gallery in this, its 30th year, will go head to head with the Frieze and Frieze Masters fairs next year, its new owners, Robert and Johnny Sandelson, have announced.
The fair, which traditionally takes place in mid-September, will now run from Oct 3 to 6, making Frieze week even busier for art buyers.
“The slightly later date allows the best of British art to be shown to the largest possible audience of both domestic and now international visitors,” says Robert Sandelson.
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