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Le Quai Malaquais et l’Institut, which features a view of the Seine from the French impressionist’s hotel room on the third floor of the Hotel du Quai Voltaire, was due to be auctioned by Christie’s in London on Tuesday. But lawyers representing various scions of the Fischer family, which founded the German publishing house Fischer Verlag, were unable to reach an agreement about the painting’s rightful owner and it was withdrawn from sale, according to The Times. The painting, which Pissarro painted in 1903 shortly before his death, was bought by Samuel Fischer, the founder of Fischer Verlag, in 1907 and after his death, passed to his daughter Brigitte who was living in Vienna, Austria with her husband Gottfried Bermann. Bermann abandoned his career as a surgeon and gradually took the reins of Fischer Verlag, becoming a celebrated publisher in his own right of authors including Thomas Mann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Hermann Hesse. But as Hitler’s Army approached the border, he and his family escaped to the United States, taking only what they could.
The Pissarro remained hanging in their dining room until it was seized by Gestapo agents and sold, along with an El Greco, a Cezanne and a Gaugin, at the Dorotheum in Vienna in 1940. (Telegraph)
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