A Picasso painting expected to fetch up to $68 million will be auctioned, despite claims its original owner was forced to sell it to the Nazis.

A U.S. District Judge issued the ruling on Tuesday, one day after originally blocking the auction and four days after an heir to Berlin banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy filed a lawsuit to stop the sale.

The Blue Period portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto by Pablo Picasso is displayed at Christie's auction rooms in London on Sept. 15 this year.
(Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press)

The painting, Portrait de Angel Fernandez de Soto, from the artist's Blue Period, will be sold at auction at Christie's in New York on Wednesday.

The oil-on-canvas was put up for sale by the Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation, a London-based charity.

In the lawsuit filed Friday, Julius H. Schoeps of Germany sought to be declared the painting's rightful owner, arguing Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was forced to flee his mansion and sell his prized paintings during the Second World War.

Five Picasso paintings, including the de Soto painting, were sold to Berlin art dealer Justin K. Thannhauser in October 1934. The painting was then sold to a New York art dealer in 1936 and was on the New York market for 50 years until the British composer Webber purchased it at auction at Sotheby's in 1995.

Webber's foundation dismissed the lawsuit and halting of the auction as "utterly spurious without legal or factual substance." The foundation said the painting's origins were never questioned in the 11 years since it was purchased.

With files from the Associated Press