Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered a reexamination of a legal battle over a Nazi-looted painting.
- The Cassirer family seeks the return of Pissarro's painting from Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
- The museum claims ownership under Spanish law but faces pressure to return the artwork.
SALT LAKE CITY — An impressionist painting worth tens of millions of dollars is at the heart of an ongoing legal battle between the family of a Holocaust survivor and a Spanish museum that bought it 25 years ago.
The family of Lilly Cassirer has sought the return of Camille Pissarro's "Rue St. Honoré, dans l'après-midi. Effet de pluie" for two decades. Their quest has played out in federal courts in California and before the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Monday, the high court overturned a lower court ruling awarding the work to a Madrid museum that has long argued it can lay claim under Spanish law to the 1897 oil painting, according to the Washington Post.
The painting once hung in the parlor of Cassirer's home in Germany. Her descendants call it a "family treasure" and argue the museum has both a moral imperative to return it and a duty under international treaties.
The Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals court in California to reexamine the case after a California law passed last year in response to the case that makes it easier for victims of persecution to recover stolen property, per the Post.
Ownership dispute
"We hope Spain and its museum will now do the right thing and return the Nazi-looted art they are holding without further delay," said David Boies, an attorney for the family. He said the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid would be subject to the jurisdiction of the court despite being overseas.
Thaddeus J. Stauber, an attorney for the museum, told the Post in a statement that the museum would continue to fight to keep the painting in Spain, while also making its pre-World War II ownership clear.
"The foundation, as it has for the past 20 years, looks forward to working with all concerned to once again ensure that its ownership is confirmed with the painting remaining on public display in Madrid," he said.
Known in English as "St. Honoré Street in the afternoon. Effect of rain," Pissarro, one of the major artists of the impressionist movement, painted the work from the window of a hotel where he stayed late in his career.
Cassirer's family bought the painting from Pissarro's art dealer in 1900. Cassirer was forced by the Nazis to sell the work in 1939 to obtain exit visas to flee Germany, a fact the museum does not dispute.
The painting was sold and resold until eventually ending up in the United States. Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a wealthy Swiss art collector, bought the painting from a New York gallery. He later loaned the painting to Spain, and it was displayed at the museum named after him starting in 1992. The museum purchased the painting the next year, the Post reported.
Claude Cassirer, grandson of Lilly Cassirer, learned that the painting was at the Thyssen-Bornemisza in 2000 and petitioned Spain and the museum to return it. After the request was denied, he filed suit in 2005 in federal court in California, citing a law that strips foreign countries of immunity in U.S. courts in cases when property is taken in violation of international law.
The museum has said it didn't know the painting was stolen when it was purchased.
Nazi looting
The Nazi Party leadership's interest in art arose early on, and art confiscations began by 1938, according to the National Archives. Soon after its rise to power in 1933, the party purged so-called "degenerate art" from German public institutions.
Artworks deemed degenerate by the Nazis included modern French and German artists in the areas of cubism, expressionism and impressionism. About 16,000 pieces were removed, and by 1938 the Nazi Party declared that all German art museums were "purified."
