A footwear mogul kicked hard by the Bernard Madoff scandal must now give his beloved Picasso the boot to recoup part of his $150 million loss.
Jerome Fisher, co-founder of shoe company Nine West, has put “Mousquetaire a la pipe,” a 5-foot-tall work painted in 1968, on the auction block at Christie’s International in Midtown, Bloomberg News reported yesterday.
The auction, also featuring paintings by Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas and Joan Miró, is set for tomorrow.
Listed at $12 million to $18 million, the artwork is pictured on the catalog cover and is one of 50 pieces up for sale, according to Christie’s Web site.
Fisher bought the painting, featuring the abstracted image of a pipe-smoking musketeer, at Christie’s in New York in November 2004 for $7.2 million — almost double the $4 million estimate.
That was before Fisher fell prey to the Wall Street scammer’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme.
Fisher, however, is making a wiser deal this time around.
Despite the bad economy and sagging art market, Fisher has a deal with the auction house that allows him to pocket a guaranteed amount of money regardless of the outcome of the sale, Bloomberg News said.
The specific amount was not known.
Christie’s confirmed yesterday a third party is backing the deal, but declined to elaborate.
Fisher, who lives in Palm Beach, Fla., didn’t return a call for comment.
Fisher’s name appears on the 162-page list of Madoff clients made available by the feds after the Ponzi schemer was arrested last December.
Madoff will face 150 years behind bars when he is sentenced in June.
Last year, Fisher, an art lover and philanthropist, donated $50 million to the University of Pennsylvania to build a biomedical research center.