THE fashion designer Stella McCartney is embroiled in a family court battle over the proceeds from her late grandfather’s £27.5m art collection.

McCartney and six of her relations are being sued for a share of the money raised from the collection of Lee Eastman, who was a successful American lawyer.

The seven were beneficiaries of the sale at Christies in New York last year of Eastman’s collection, which held works by some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, including Picasso, Matisse, de Kooning, Rothko and Giacometti.

Although details of the division of the proceeds are not known, an equal share for McCartney would have amounted to about £4m.

This would have been welcome to the designer: her fashion label, which she co-owns with Gucci, has accumulated losses of millions of pounds in the five years since it started business.

She famously called her father Sir Paul McCartney, the former Beatle, a “tight bastard” for educating her at the local comprehensive in East Sussex rather than paying to put her through independent school.

After a stunning debut at Central St Martins College of Art and Design — Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell modelled her creations — McCartney went on to build up her fashion label, apparently without financial support from her father’s £800m fortune.

Likewise McCartney will not benefit from her mother’s £138m fortune until after her father’s death. Linda, who was Eastman’s daughter, died of cancer in 1998, leaving her money to her husband.

The battle over the Eastman fortune has been launched by Paul, Peter and Philip Sprayregen, the sons of Lee’s second wife Monique from a previous marriage.

They claim their mother built the collection jointly with Eastman and that, as her heirs, they are entitled to part of the money raised from it. Eastman died in 1991, while Monique lived until last year.

The legal action, reported in the March issue of The Art Newspaper, was filed in the New York state supreme court at the end of last month.

It claims that “during Lee’s lifetime, and after his marriage to Monique, the two of them accumulated a large collection of paintings from well known artists, many of which today have great value. That collection was always referred to as the collection of Lee and Monique Eastman, and was recently referred to by Christies as the Collection of Lee V Eastman.”

In addition to Stella McCartney and Linda’s three other children, the defendants include John Eastman, Lee’s son and executor, and two other relations.

Stella McCartney is the most high-profile of the defendants. She set up a design company in 2001 after resigning from Chloe, the Paris fashion house, to enter into a 50:50 venture with Gucci using her own name as the brand. In 2003 she launched a perfume.

Despite her growing reputation, McCartney, 34, has seen her company run up losses of £15m in the past five years. This is despite deals for her clothes to be sold by the chains H&M and Adidas.

Last week her label posted losses of nearly £1m for the last trading year, although turnover had doubled to £7.3m. This, however, was better than the £3m loss posted in the previous year. McCartney drew a salary of £515,514 last year.

Commenting on the lawsuit, McCartney said in a statement yesterday: “Unfortunately, as one of the seven beneficiaries of my grandfather Lee Eastman’s estate, I had no legal say over the decision made by the estate’s executors.”

John Eastman, also a well-known American lawyer, declined to comment on the lawsuit, as did Paul Bschorr, lawyer for the Sprayregens.

The single most expensive item in the November sale at Christies was an abstract work called Untitled 1977, by Willem de Kooning, the Dutch artist whose business affairs were managed by Lee Eastman. It fetched nearly £6m. Another de Kooning abstract from 1975 was sold for more than £2m.

Picasso’s Buste de Femme, dated December 1939, went for more than £4m, while a Matisse bronze, conceived in 1910 although not cast until 1952, fetched £850,000.

A Giacometti bust sold for more than £2m.

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