Like luggage circling endlessly on airport conveyor belts, the painting Corbeille de pêches et raisins (Basket with Peaches and Grapes, 1881), attributed to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, has repeatedly appeared before courts and under the scrutiny of experts. On Thursday, May 15, the painting is at the center of an appeal procedure in Paris in the criminal aspect of an inheritance that has been stalled for 30 years.
Since the death in 1995 of their father François Bokor, his two heirs, Elisabeth Bokor, from a first marriage, and Jean-François Mourtoux, his son from another relationship, have been at odds over this still life. It never belonged to their family. But before his death, François Bokor lent nearly two million francs to an elderly woman who owned it, in exchange for a deposit on the painting, without ever seeing his money again.
Upon his death, the debt acknowledgments, which amounted to more than half the value of the estate, mysteriously vanished. Building various hypotheses, sometimes defying all rationality, Jean-François Mourtoux, an unsuccessful candidate in the 2024 legislative elections on the list of right-wing leader Eric Ciotti, now accuses his sister, 27 years his senior, of having stolen them to disinherit him. The civil lawsuit he filed against her remains unresolved. The criminal proceedings initiated in 2019 for “concealment of breach of trust” were dismissed in January 2024, a decision his lawyer, Francis Vuillemin, plans to challenge on appeal.
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