[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Alison-Jacques.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tTwo Swedish-American buyers are suing London\u2019s Alison Jacques gallery, accusing breach of contract over the sale of three works by the Swedish-born artist Monica Sj\u00f6\u00f6, whose estate Jacques represents. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe 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\u2019s works, the Art Newspaper<\/em> (TAN<\/em>) reports. The Anises, who paid \u00a3264,000 (about $358,000) for three paintings from the 1990s, split their time between Stockholm and Austin, Texas, and operate a tech company.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe paintings in question had been included in a retrospective dedicated to Sj\u00f6\u00f6, \u201cThe Great Cosmic Mother,\u201d which opened at the Moderna Musseet in Stockholm in 2023. Born in Sweden in 1938, Sj\u00f6\u00f6 spent the majority of her life in Bristol, England. Sj\u00f6\u00f6, who died from cancer at 66 in 2005, described herself as a \u201cradical anarcho\/eco-feminist and Goddess artist, writer and thinker involved in Earth spirituality.\u201d Her best-known painting, God Giving Birth <\/em>(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. <\/p>\n \n\tThe 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\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n \n\tPer TAN<\/em>, Anise told the estate\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201ccredentials\u201d as collectors. Moreover, Jacques allegedly told St. Germain in an email that \u201cMrs Anise had made representatives of the Estate \u2019very uncomfortable\u2019 by oversharing things about her personal life and emotions.\u201d Anise said that those remarks weren\u2019t meant seriously.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn a countersuit, Jacques said the Anises \u201cneither desired nor intended to promote appreciation for Monica Sj\u00f6\u00f6 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\u2019s bedrooms.\u201d Anise refutes that, telling TAN<\/em> she planned to be a good steward of the works, including lending them to museum exhibitions.<\/p>\n \n\tThe dispute also revolves around the couple\u2019s history and future as collectors. St. Germain, the gallery says, told a gallery employee that the Anises were \u201cbeginning to collect and have the potential to be very important supporters for this artist.\u201d Jacques says that Anise\u2019s comment at the dinner, to the effect that they had never bought art before, contradicts that characterization.<\/p>\n \n\tNeither Jacques nor St. Germain immediately responded to ARTnews<\/em>\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n \n\tPer the filing, Jacques also claims that St. Germain told her in a November 2023 phone call that she \u201cwished 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 \u2018would not be a good idea\u2019 and that she should have \u2018kept them separate from the estate.\u2019\u201d 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 \u201cwould screw it up.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe Anises paid for the paintings immediately but, since they were on view in Oxford and were then set to travel to the Moderna Museet Malm\u00f6 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 Malm\u00f6, as Modern Art Oxford shipped them to Jacques\u2019 gallery upon learning of the dispute.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to emails reviewed by TAN<\/em>, 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tJacques 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\u2019 market value. The couple is also asking for St. Germain\u2019s 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 \u201cpleasure, amenity, prestige and heritage value\u201d as a result of not being credited with lending the works to a museum show.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn its counterclaim, the gallery says the couple refused to either take possession of the paintings or accept a refund, instead wanting \u201ccompensation for hurt feelings\u201d and for the gallery to pay for what it is calling a holiday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/collectors-sue-alison-jacques-monica-sjoo-cancels-sale-1234795087\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Alison-Jacques.jpg?w=1024″] Two Swedish-American buyers are suing London\u2019s Alison Jacques gallery, accusing breach of contract over the sale of three works by the Swedish-born artist Monica Sj\u00f6\u00f6, 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2100476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2100476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2100476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2100476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2100476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}