The sons of a French pen magnate say their chauffeur walked into the family’s Fifth Avenue apartment 20 years ago and walked out with a 15th-century Renaissance masterpiece.
The “unique and irreplaceable” Italian painting ended up in the collection of a Chilean billionaire, according to a complaint filed in Manhattan Supreme Court last week. Now the three brothers want it back.
While the inner dealings of New York’s elite art collecting scene are typically shrouded from the public, the palace drama offers a rare glimpse — and the picture is not pretty. The Bich family’s quest to reclaim the painting unfolds like a plotline out of “Succession,” with the right-wing media scions replaced by the heirs to a pen and disposable razor fortune.
The brothers are suing the painting’s new owners and the estate of the dealer they say acquired it from the driver. Both the dealer and chauffeur have died since the time of the alleged heist. The Bich’s legal team did not respond to questions for this story.
The story laid out in the lawsuit begins in 1972, when Baron Marcel Bich, founder of the Bic pen company, purchased Fra Angelico’s “Saint Sixtus” for 130,000 British pounds at Sotheby’s.
Angelico, a Dominican friar, is widely regarded as one of the greatest painters of the early Renaissance. His pieces rarely come up for sale and fetch millions of dollars at auction.
When Baron Bich died in 1994, he willed the Angelico to his son Bruno, according to court documents. Records show Bruno displayed the painting in his Fifth Avenue apartment and placed it in a trust to be inherited by his three sons, Charles, Gonzalve, and Guillaume.
But the brothers said at some point the work “disappeared” from their father’s home.
The Bich family's former Fifth Avenue residence.
The family said in court records that they did not publicize the missing painting because they worried it would potentially lure other thieves to their apartment or cause the person in possession of the piece to better hide it. A spokesperson for the NYPD said there is no report on file about the theft.
The Bichs said their own investigation eventually led to the family chauffeur, Roy Morrow. They accuse him of entering Bruno Bich’s apartment and stealing the Angelico “in or around 2006.”
Art dealer Richard Feigen acquired the painting for $3 million — a “fire-sale” price, according to the lawsuit.
Feigen, who died in 2021, was a prominent dealer and collector in New York for decades. According to a New York Times obituary, Feigen’s influence “included brokering top-dollar deals of all sorts for museums and magnates while championing both old masters and new talent.”
The Bich brothers have a lower opinion of Feigen. In their complaint they say the dealer should have been suspicious of Morrow, “a company chauffeur with no art-collecting background, no documented means, and no plausible explanation for possessing a multimillion-dollar masterpiece.”
Representatives for Feigen’s company and his estate said the sale was perfectly legal, and rejected the Bich family’s allegations “in their entirety.”
In a statement, the attorneys said “Mr. Feigen made no effort to hide the acquisition or ownership, and, indeed, loaned the work for widely-seen and reported public exhibitions in both Europe and the U.S.”
Feigen’s representatives also pointed to a 2021 affidavit where Bruno Bich accused his wife Veronique of giving the painting to Morrow herself and refusing her husband’s demands to return it.
Public records show Morrow died in 2020.
Feigen consigned the painting to Christie’s in 2018, according to court documents. That’s where the brothers allege it was privately purchased for $5.4 million by Palestinian-Chilean billionaire Álvaro Saieh and his wife, Ana Guzmán.
Saieh and Guzmán maintain a globally renowned collection of Italian Renaissance art. Saieh is the chair of Corp Group, one of Chile’s largest conglomerates, and was once ranked on Forbes’ global billionaire list. Public records show he and Guzmán have an apartment on East 57th Street.
The Bich brothers claim they first tried to settle the matter privately. But “Saieh and Guzman have refused to return the work despite being informed that it was stolen,” according to the complaint.
A spokesperson for Saieh pushed back on the Bich family’s claims.
“We acquired the artwork from Christie’s in 2018, relying on the studies made by one of the world’s leading auction houses,” Corp Group general counsel Andrés Winter Salgado said in a statement. “We will take all necessary steps to vigorously protect our rights and will respond through the appropriate legal channels.”
A representative for Christie’s said the company does not comment on lawsuits to which it is not a party.
The Bichs are now asking a judge to order the return of the painting and for the Feigen estate to surrender the millions of dollars of proceeds from the sale.
Attorneys for Saieh, Guzmán and the Feigen organization have not yet filed a response in court.
This is not the first art-related dispute within the Bich family. In 2020 the website Artnet reported that Bruno Bich sued Veronique in Delaware state court, alleging she refused to give up 28 works from their New York and Paris apartments, including a Warhol and a Picasso.
Court records show the couple divorced in 2021. Bruno Bich died the same year.
Veronique Bich has also made local tabloid headlines for taking her sons to court over control of the family fortune.
Charles, Gonzalve, and Guillaume appear to think their mother had something to do with the chauffeur’s alleged heist. According to the complaint, each time their father confronted Veronique about the missing painting, she supposedly “lied” about its whereabouts.
Veronique Bich could not be reached for comment. But she seems to be moving on from the purported scene of the crime.
Earlier this month Veronique Bich sold the family’s Fifth Avenue penthouse for $13.8 million to Sachin Shridharani, a well-known plastic surgeon.
Photos attached to the listing show the walls have been painted a stark white, with no trace of Renaissance art.
