Mansion-owning hash importer and Verdun trucker's feud over painting by Picasso-of-India

 

 Jeffrey White was at home on Bannantyne with his kids one day in 1997 when his father brought over a 10-foot by 4-foot painting.
   White's father said that he had received it from someone who no longer wanted it.
   White, a longtime truck driver for a moving company, father-of-four with a grade nine education, was the furthest from an art expert.
   Jeffrey unwrapped the painting and showed his wife Charlene.
   She wasn't impressed. Neither were. They speculated that it wasn't done by a real artist.
   The couple mounted it up on their wall nonetheless and assumed it was worthless. Jeffrey once came within an inch of tearing it up to let his kids use the canvas for finger painting.
   Visitors to the home would frequently express displeasure with the artwork, as perhaps some passerby on Bannantyne might have done while seeing it through the window while walking by.
    White eventually googled the name Husain, signed in the corner of the painting but made no conclusions until 2015 when he showed it to an art dealer who suggested he approach the Heffel Montreal auction house.
   Someone from that office estimated it to be worth somewhere between $10,000 and $80,000.
  White was amazed and thrilled and hired Heffel to put it up on auction on April 7, 2016. Heffel put the painting on the cover of their catalogue.
***
  Samuel Lallouz saw the catalogue and immediately called his brother Sidney Lallouz.
   Sidney Lallouz is familiar to Montrealers for inspiring many complicated lawsuits, criminal trials and investigative journalist features over the years.
   The high-living, mansion-living, frequently-moving, oft-divorced millionaire started receiving attention in 1981 when he was sent to prison for hashish importation, then scolded again for his close business association with a fugitive Latino drug kingpin and finally in 2006 when he was busted again for hashish and sentenced to six years behind bars.
   Sidney Lallouz not only knew about the painting, he oversaw its creation.
   Sidney Lallouz and his then-wife Danielle met Maqbool Fida Husain (1915-2011) in India in 1979, where Husain was affectionately known as The Barefoot Picasso.
   Husain was a Bombay tailor who became a poster artist and later stirred hostility when he painted nude Cubist versions of Hindu deities. At least one of his paintings later sold for over $1 million.
   Lallouz invited Husain to stay with him at his mansion on Cedar to continue his work. One day, inspired by the Iranian hostage crisis, Husain painted a large canvas he called Les Otages.
    As one description has it:

The painting is a large, stark and imposing one.  It is composed of flat, truncated and distorted forms.  Intertwined, naked, blindfolded and distressed human figures with no faces, their mouths open in anguish are set against a minimal grey and dark backdrop lit by a black sun.  Stating an obvious truth, its essential message is that life is horrible for those depicted on the canvas.

   Sid and Sam and Danielle were enthusiastic about Husain's work and exhibited his paintings at Place des Arts and their gallery on Bishop Street in 1981.

Sidney Lallouz with then-wife Danielle c. 1980

   Sid and Sam traveled with Husain to promote his work and reportedly spent over $1 million promoting and marketing his work and predicted that they would make $25 million selling his paintings.
   Les Otages was on display in a 1982 NYC exhibit attended by Pierre Cardin and the Secretary General of UN Javier Perez de Cuellar and they have video to prove it.
 The Lallouz brothers closed their gallery in 1983 and Sidney brought Husain's works to his home and promised his brother one-third of whatever they sold for if they ever got sold.   
  Sidney brought the painting when he moved to Spain in 1989. It was exhibited in Seville in 1992 and Lallouz returned with it to Montreal the next year, storing it in a building he temporarily owned at One Wood Avenue in Westmount. Lallouz co-owned the building with drug kingpin Tico Rodriguez, who put up all of the money for the property until law enforcement forced that deal to come to an end.

Pierre Cardin, Husain and Javier de Cuellar

 Les Otages then went to Sidney's mansion on Maplewood in Outremont and later on to Holly Street in Hampstead in 1997 when he divorced his wife Danielle. Sidney sold five Hustain paintings with Sothebys NY for $75,000.
 Lallouz and new wife Ziv Zivit Zagury then moved to Israel in 1998. When packing his stuff, Lallouz noticed that the painting, that had shown in France, England, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Cyprus, Venezuela, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Colorado and Chicago was missing.
   **
   Nineteen years later Sidney Lallouz rushed back from Morocco to stop the auction.
   His lawyer Reevin Pearl alleged that the work was worth $800,000.
   The lawsuits began.
   White filed an application to the Institute Proceedings for Declaratory Judgement on 14 July 2016 and Sidney Lallouz filed a defence six months later.
   White's claim noted that he received the painting as a gift from his now-deceased father and had enjoyed "peaceful, continuous, public and unequivocal possession" since receiving it.
   Lallouz argued that White had not established title and that Lallouz was unable to act in a timely manner due to the circumstances of the disappearance.
   A judge looked at Quebec's Civil code sections 922-930 and 2910 to 2919 and in a decision dated 27 February 2018, awarded ownership to White.
  The case was settled and White had won.
   Judge Paul Mayer tossed out White's bid to be compensated $50,000 for his troubles.
   Coolopolis is still venturing to find out what became of the painting and how much it fetched at auction.
   
A detailed summary of the case here.