Lenin's 1918 decree took Sergei Shchukin's 258 paintings, and his heirs' claims in Paris and Los Angeles failed

Sergei Shchukin, a Moscow textile merchant, hung 258 paintings in his mansion, including works by Matisse and Picasso. He emigrated in August 1918. A decree signed by Lenin in November 1918 nationalised the collection, which opened in 1919 as the First Museum of New Western Painting. Shchukin settled in Paris and died there on 10 January 1936. In 1948 Stalin closed the State Museum of New Western Art, and its works were divided between the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage. In 1993, during a Matisse exhibition in Paris, Shchukin's daughter Irina asked a French court to sequester 28 paintings. The court ruled that it could not undo the nationalisation of a sovereign state's property, and France then strengthened its guarantees for lent art. Her son, André-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud, born in 1942, took up the claim. He sought recognition of ownership and compensation, not the paintings' return. In July 2003 he sued in Los Angeles during a US tour of the works, which had US immunity; the suit went nowhere. In 2004 he gave six paintings to the Pushkin Museum. In 2008 the Shchukin and Morozov heirs refused a Royal Academy offer of £5,000 per family in exchange for making no claims during a London show. From 22 October 2016 to 5 March 2017 the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris showed the collection. He received Russian citizenship in 2019^†. In 2026 the paintings remain in Russian state museums, and no court has recognised the heirs' title.