Hey, That's My Cezanne

The Bolsheviks stole his family’s Cezanne, and now it’s on the walls of the Met, claims a Frenchman in a federal lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Pierre Konowaloff is suing for the return of a painting that was stolen from his grandfather’s collection, sold to an American art dealer through a laundering racket, and eventually made its way to New York. (Konowaloff is also going after a Van Gogh that ended up at Yale University. He says he didn’t file the suit sooner because he didn’t have a full accounting of the stolen works, most of which are in Russian museums, before his grandfather died. The Met responded that the lawsuit was “totally without merit” and said it plans to fight to keep the Cezanne.