Settlement reached in suit for $8 million fake painting purchased by Hilton Head residents
A Hilton Head Island couple have settled part of their lawsuit with a former New York gallery president, after an $8.3 million painting they bought was revealed to be a fake.
Domenico and Eleanore De Sole sued Knoedler & Company and its former director and president, Ann Freedman, in 2012 after they unwittingly purchased a phony Mark Rothko painting, according to the New York Times.
A trial on the couple’s case began last week in New York and continued this week against Knoedler & Company.
A settlement was reached between the De Soles and Freedman on Sunday, according to The New York Times. Terms of that settlement have not been disclosed. The couple’s claims against Knoedler & Company, however, were not settled.
De Sole, the chairman of Tom Ford International, and his wife, Eleanore, hung the painting in their beachfront Sea Pines home, the New York Post reported.
I got a fake painting for $8.3 million and I want my money back
Domenico De Sole
“I got a fake painting for $8.3 million and I want my money back,” Domenico De Sole has said during testimony, according to Artnet News.
In 2011, the purported Rothko work — “Untitled, 1956” — was revealed to be one of dozens of fake paintings created by a Chinese painter in Queens, Pei-Shen Qian, that sold for over $80 million from 1994 to 2009. Press reports on the forged paintings put the number between 30 and 60 works claimed to be by famous artists such as Rothko and Jackson Pollock.
The forgeries were given to Knoedler by Long Island-based art dealer Glafira Rosales, who claimed the paintings were from the estate of a Swiss businessman, according to the Post.
Knoedler & Company, which was founded in 1846, announced it would fold soon after the fake paintings came to light.
Rosales pleaded guilty to federal money laundering, wire fraud and tax evasion charges in 2013, but has not been sentenced. Rosales’s boyfriend, who steered her toward Qian after meeting the artist selling canvases on the street in Spain, was arrested in Seville on fraud charges in 2014. Qian fled to China soon after the fraud was discovered, the Post wrote.
The De Soles’ suit seeks damages of $25 million, according to court records.
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This story was originally published February 8, 2016 at 9:53 AM with the headline "Settlement reached in suit for $8 million fake painting purchased by Hilton Head residents."