One of Mayfair’s most high-profile art dealers is at the center of a number of multi-million-pound international claims after wealthy clients who used him as an agent to sell masterpieces by artists such as Van Gogh, Canaletto, Picasso, Chagall, Modigliani and Magritte were not paid, reports the Daily Mail.

Timothy Sammons, 59, a former head in Sotheby's Chinese art department, has long helmed his own art dealership with such high-profile sales as John Singer Sargent’s painting Cashmere to the Bill Gates Foundation. Sammons sold the American masterpiece for a record-breaking £6.7 million in 1996.

Now, an array of well-heeled clients are claiming that Sammons owes them the proceeds of sales or the return of their artworks. High Court will hear the case.