The Matthiesen Gallery has filed a lawsuit towards a convicted con man, an artist, one other Previous Masters artwork gallery and a high artwork collector alleging fraud, breach of contract, and 4 different counts over the Gustave Courbet portray Mom and Baby on a Hammock.
In court docket paperwork filed in america District Court docket within the Southern District of New York, the London-based gallery alleges that Thomas Austin Doyle ““launched into a multi-year undertaking to defraud Patrick Matthiesen,” the director of the gallery, over the sale of the portray.
In response to these paperwork, final yr Doyle informed Matthiesen he discovered a purchaser keen to pay $550,000 for the portray, and would dealer the sale with out taking any fee. Doyle delivered the work by the nineteenth century French painter to artist, artwork supplier, and enterprise accomplice Shalva Sarukhanishvili. Sarukhanishvili then bought Mom and Baby on a Hammock to Jill Newhouse Gallery in New York for $115,000. Jill Newhouse Gallery then bought it to ARTnews High 200 Collector Jon Landau for $125,000 in September 2024.
The portray really retailed for $650,000, and had been supplied by Matthiesen Gallery at that worth for a number of years, together with at TEFAF New York in 2019.
“In the end, after years of deception, Doyle confessed in an e-mail dated March 4, 2025 that he had betrayed Plaintiff. He beneficial that Plaintiff work with Sarukhanishvili to resolve the matter. Accordingly, Plaintiff started e-mailing Sarukhanishvili to retrieve the cash owed, or the Portray. Sarukhanishvili shrugged off any requests for help after which minimize off communications.”
The lawsuit additionally alleges that Landau beforehand considered the portray “multiples occasions at a number of places”, together with at TEFAF Maastricht in 2023 the place it was on consignment with Nicholas Corridor Gallery, and “every time he was conscious that its retail worth was $650,000 or extra” however that he at present had possession of Mom and Baby on a Hammock however refused to return it to Matthiesen.
When ARTnews contacted Jill Newhouse Gallery for remark, lawyer Amelia Okay. Brankov wrote in an electronic mail, “The claims asserted towards Jill Newhouse LLC are meritless and we are going to vigorously defend towards them in court docket.”
Landau’s lawyer, Jonathan D. Kraut, informed ARTnews in an electronic mail, “With respect to our shopper Jon Landau, we view the lawsuit as wholly with out advantage and we are going to handle it accordingly in court docket.”
Sarukhanishvili couldn’t be reached for remark at press time.
Notably, a earlier lawsuit filed towards Doyle in September 2010 over Portrait of a Lady, a portray by Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot, led to the invention he “spent greater than two years in jail after he pleaded responsible in 2007 to stealing from an artwork collector a bronze Degas statue of a nude dancer,” reported the New York Occasions in 2010.
Only some days later, Doyle was arrested by the Manhattan District Legal professional Preet Bharara’s workplace in September 2010 on the fees of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud for orchestrating the fraudulent buy of the portray for $800,000. It had been valued as excessive as $1.35 million.
Doyle pled responsible to at least one depend of wire fraud. Through the sentencing listening to in Manhattan Federal Court docket, Choose Colleen McMahon of Federal District Court docket recounted that Doyle had been convicted 11 occasions over the earlier 34 years, reported the New York Occasions.
“You’re a profession legal by any definition of the time period,” Choose McMahon informed Doyle, earlier than sentencing him to 6 years in jail. “Society must be shielded from you; you’re a predator.”
