Yoed and Natasha Anise are suing the Alison Jacques gallery for breach of contract after the London dealer cancelled the sale of three large paintings by Swedish-born artist Monica Sjöö, The Art Newspaper reported. The couple bought Meeting the Ancestors at Avebury from 1993, Forest Beings from 1997 and Amazon Women of the Bronze Age from 1999 on 6 October 2023 for £264,000, a 20 percent discount from the £330,000 asking price. Their art adviser Marie St Germain helped arrange the transaction, which occurred while the works were included in a touring retrospective. The case is scheduled to be heard at Central London County Court in March 2027.
The Anises first saw the paintings at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet during the 2023 exhibition The Great Cosmic Mother, according to The Art Newspaper. They met representatives of Sjöö’s estate at a dinner on 16 November 2023 celebrating the show’s opening at Modern Art Oxford. Days later the gallery informed St Germain that the estate had rescinded the sale. Natasha Anise told The Art Newspaper that her remarks at the dinner, in which she said she had never bought art before and might never do so again, prompted the decision.
The gallery wrote in November 2023 emails that it had been misled about the Anises’ credentials by their adviser and that Mrs Anise had made representatives of the estate very uncomfortable by oversharing things about her personal life and emotions, The Art Newspaper reported. In a counterclaim the gallery states the couple refused to take possession of the paintings or accept a refund and instead sought compensation for hurt feelings. The estate and gallery also questioned whether the Anises would serve as appropriate stewards for the works.
The Anises are seeking return of the £264,000 purchase price plus an additional £66,000 reflecting the discount they argue represents current market value, The Art Newspaper said. They are also demanding reimbursement of St Germain’s $31,944 fee, travel and legal costs and a further $31,944 in damages for loss of pleasure, amenity, prestige and heritage value from not being credited as lenders to a museum show. A biography published on the Moderna Museet website notes that Sjöö, who lived from 1938 to 2005, produced foundational works in the feminist art movement in Britain from the early 1970s.
Sjöö’s painting God Giving Birth from 1968, which depicts a woman in labour, sparked protests from Christian groups when first exhibited, according to the museum biography. She co-wrote the 1971 manifesto Towards a Revolutionary Feminist Art and the 1987 book The Great Cosmic Mother, helping shape the Goddess movement. The 2023 Moderna Museet retrospective, which later travelled to Modern Art Oxford and other venues, marked the most comprehensive survey of her output in decades and drew renewed international attention to her paintings and activism.
Auction records compiled by Artnet show relatively few public sales of Sjöö’s work prior to the retrospective, with examples changing hands in 2012 and 2019. The high six-figure sum paid by the Anises reflects the increased visibility and market interest generated by the touring exhibition that featured the three disputed canvases. The paintings remain in the gallery’s possession and were subsequently slated for display at Moderna Museet in Malmö, The Art Newspaper reported.
