Alison Jacques Gallery Hit with Lawsuit After Artist’s Estate Cancels Sale to First-Time Collectors

Two Swedish-American buyers are suing London’s Alison Jacques gallery, accusing breach of contract over the sale of three works by the Swedish-born artist Monica Sjöö, whose estate Jacques represents.

The estate and the gallery say that Marie St. Germain, the adviser to Yoed and Natasha Anise, misrepresented the couple ahead of the purchase; they also claim that they believe the Anises would not be promising stewards of the artist’s works, the Art Newspaper (TAN) reports. The Anises, who paid £264,000 (about $358,000) for three paintings from the 1990s, split their time between Stockholm and Austin, Texas, and operate a tech company. 

The paintings in question had been included in a retrospective dedicated to Sjöö, “The Great Cosmic Mother,” which opened at the Moderna Musseet in Stockholm in 2023. Born in Sweden in 1938, Sjöö spent the majority of her life in Bristol, England. Sjöö, who died from cancer at 66 in 2005, described herself as a “radical anarcho/eco-feminist and Goddess artist, writer and thinker involved in Earth spirituality.” Her best-known painting, God Giving Birth (1968), showing the deity as a woman birthing a child, earned accusations of blasphemy and obscenity and was removed from public view in several exhibitions.

The Anises saw the Stockholm exhibition and were impressed by it, buying the works in October 2023, days before the exhibition closed. One month later, representatives of the artist’s estate met the Anises at a dinner celebrating the opening of the show when it traveled to Modern Art Oxford. A few days later, Jacques informed St. Germain that the sale was being revoked after some comments Natasha Anise made at the dinner.

Per TAN, Anise told the estate’s representative that she and her husband had never bought art before and might never do so again. Jacques reportedly told St. Germain that she had misrepresented the couple’s “credentials” as collectors. Moreover, Jacques allegedly told St. Germain in an email that “Mrs Anise had made representatives of the Estate ’very uncomfortable’ by oversharing things about her personal life and emotions.” Anise said that those remarks weren’t meant seriously. 

In a countersuit, Jacques said the Anises “neither desired nor intended to promote appreciation for Monica Sjöö and for the artworks among a wider public, including by loaning the artworks to museums but, rather, only intended to use the artworks for decorating their children’s bedrooms.” Anise refutes that, telling TAN she planned to be a good steward of the works, including lending them to museum exhibitions.

The dispute also revolves around the couple’s history and future as collectors. St. Germain, the gallery says, told a gallery employee that the Anises were “beginning to collect and have the potential to be very important supporters for this artist.” Jacques says that Anise’s comment at the dinner, to the effect that they had never bought art before, contradicts that characterization.

Neither Jacques nor St. Germain immediately responded to ARTnews’s requests for comment.

Per the filing, Jacques also claims that St. Germain told her in a November 2023 phone call that she “wished she had not allowed the [Anises] to attend the opening in Oxford and to have direct contact with the estate as she had been worried that allowing them direct contact ‘would not be a good idea’ and that she should have ‘kept them separate from the estate.’” Jacques adds that St. Germain also relayed that Anise had canceled a scheduled dinner engagement with the two of them out of concern that she “would screw it up.”

The Anises paid for the paintings immediately but, since they were on view in Oxford and were then set to travel to the Moderna Museet Malmö for the next stop on its tour, they did not immediately take custody. The paintings were to be labeled as being on loan from the Anise family. But the paintings never made it to Malmö, as Modern Art Oxford shipped them to Jacques’ gallery upon learning of the dispute. 

According to emails reviewed by TAN, the Anises were, by contract, to take ownership of the paintings immediately on payment. Jacques told them that the couple would only have ownership once the gallery paid the estate, but, in her court filing, Jacques concedes that was incorrect. 

Jacques informed the couple that the estate was offering either to release the works to them or to issue a full refund with interest. The Anises believe the estate and gallery should go further, issuing a full refund and a bonus of 20 percent, the amount of the discount, which, they argue, would reflect the paintings’ market value. The couple is also asking for St. Germain’s fee of $31,944, reflecting 10 percent of the purchase price, and demanding to be reimbursed for travel and legal costs. On top of that, they want another $31,944 in damages for the loss of “pleasure, amenity, prestige and heritage value” as a result of not being credited with lending the works to a museum show. 

In its counterclaim, the gallery says the couple refused to either take possession of the paintings or accept a refund, instead wanting “compensation for hurt feelings” and for the gallery to pay for what it is calling a holiday.