An arts charity founded by the Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has reached a settlement over ownership of a $48-million Picasso painting it had tried to sell at auction three years ago, The Independent reports.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation was blocked from selling Picasso’s “The Absinthe Drinker” by heirs of a Jewish banker who said a relative had been forced by the Nazis to relinquish the work in the 1930s. Under the settlement, the heirs have relinquished any claim to the painting, but details of the deal were not disclosed.
Lloyd Webber, the British composer of Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and other blockbuster musicals, established the foundation in 1992 to support arts education and lend important works to galleries and museums.

