A reproduction painting that once hung above Jeffrey Epstein’s desk inside his Manhattan townhouse appeared on eBay this week with an asking price of $25,000 before the listing was quietly removed from the platform.
The work is a large-format giclee print of Femme Fatale, a 1905 canvas by Dutch Fauvist painter Kees van Dongen.
The original sold at Christie’s New York in 2004 for $5.9 million.
Epstein’s version was a reproduction — listed at a New Jersey auction by Millea Bros. as “After Kees Van Dongen” — and sold for just $275, a price that likely did not cover the cost of its frame. The frame itself was crafted by Eli Wilner & Company, a prestigious New York framing house whose work also hangs in the White House collection.
The print measures approximately four feet by four feet.
The painting passed through Epstein’s estate following his death in August 2019 while in federal custody, as his assets were gradually liquidated through various auction channels.
A buyer picked it up at the New Jersey sale and subsequently listed it on eBay, apparently hoping to profit from its notorious provenance.
The listing described the piece in blunt terms, noting that federal investigators had photographed it inside Epstein’s Manhattan mansion during their search of the property — though that specific claim has not been independently verified against the publicly released Department of Justice photographs from the searches. The seller also pointed out the Eli Wilner frame as an additional selling point, noting the framers’ White House connection.
Van Dongen, who lived from 1877 to 1968, was a Dutch-French artist associated with Fauvism, a movement defined by vivid, non-naturalistic colour and bold brushwork.
Femme Fatale is among his most recognised works, depicting a woman with the theatrical intensity characteristic of his style.
The original’s $5.9 million Christie’s sale set a record for the artist at the time. That Epstein displayed a reproduction rather than an original, dressed in a frame that could have graced a museum wall, went unnoticed by most who passed through his home — which, given what investigators later uncovered there, was among the less remarkable things about the place.
It is not publicly known whether the eBay sale was completed before the listing was taken down. The platform did not immediately comment.
