eBay Pulls Listing for Van Dongen Print Linked to Jeffrey Epstein
A giclée reproduction of Kees van Dongen’s Femme Fatale briefly appeared on eBay with a price tag that climbed quickly before the platform removed it. The listing, which referenced federal prosecutors and earlier media coverage, was taken down after eBay said it violated company policy.
The print was described as the same image Jeffrey Epstein kept above his desk. According to the listing, the seller was seeking $50,000, and bidding had reached $25,000 before the item disappeared. That is a dramatic escalation for a reproduction that Millea Bros. Auctioneers previously offered for $275.
The original Femme Fatale has a very different market history. Christie’s sold the painting in 2004 for $5.94 million, underscoring the distance between the value of the unique work and the speculative pull of its printed afterlife. Van Dongen, a French Fauvist associated with vivid color and stylized portraiture, has long been a fixture of the secondary market, but this episode shows how context can reshape attention around even a reproduction.
The listing first drew wider notice after The New York Post reported on it. Its removal adds another layer to the long and uneasy afterlife of objects connected to Epstein, where art, notoriety, and online commerce can intersect in ways that are difficult to separate. In this case, the market interest was real, but so was the platform’s decision to shut it down.
