A Picasso masterpiece being sold by Andrew Lloyd Webber was withdrawn from a major auction in New York because of an eleventh hour dispute over its ownership, Christie's announced last night.
The Blue Period painting of the artist's friend Angel Fernandez de Soto had been expected to fetch up to #33 million for the composer's charitable foundation in New York last night.
The foundation was selling the painting, bought by the composer in 1995 for #18 million, to raise money for a variety of arts charities.
But Christie's said a last minute claim by Julius Schoeps, the descendant of a banker of Jewish descent persecuted by the Nazis, to be the legal owner of the masterpiece had caused them with "great reluctance" them to stop its sale.
"The joint decision was the result of eleventh hour claims - claims that Chris-tie's and the Foundation believe to have no merit - about title to the picture," a statement from the auction house said.
Mr Schoeps' filed a lawsuit late last week alleging that his ancestor, Berlin banker Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, was forced to sell the painting by the Nazi regime in the 1930s because his family descended from Jews.
Lord Lloyd Webber had dismissed Mr Schoeps' lawsuit as "utterly spurious" and a federal judge threw it out on Tuesday but said it could be pursued in state court.
The painting was among 86 lots, which included four works by Gustav Klimt looted by the Nazis, expected to fetch up to half a billion (#270 million).
