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A New York state judge has dismissed a bid by a German resident to win possession of a Pablo Picasso painting he says the Nazis forced his Jewish great-uncle to sell.
The judge granted the motion by the painting's current owner, the Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation, to dismiss the lawsuit after finding Julius Schoeps did not have the right to sue without being appointed a personal representative of his great-uncle's estate.
The artwork in dispute is Picasso's 1903 Blue Period oil painting The Absinthe Drinker (Portrait de Angel Fernandez de Soto), which Christie's auction house predicted could be sold for up to US$60 million ($79.9 million).
The Lloyd Webber foundation and Christie's withdrew the painting from sale last year after Mr Schoeps sued in federal court to stop its auction.
Mr Schoeps claimed his great-uncle, Paul von Mendelssohn-Barthody, was forced to sell it in 1934 to a Berlin art dealer.
Since Mr Mendelssohn-Barthody's death in 1935, the judge wrote, the painting has been sold in New York at least four times. The most recent sale, in 1995, was to the Lloyd Webber foundation, a London-based charity established by the theatrical composer, for US$29.1 million.
The judge noted that Mr Mendelssohn-Barthody left a will that was silent as to the painting, and it was not absolutely clear to the court that he owned it when he died.
- AP
