Jewish family in legal battle with museum over Pissarro masterpiece seized by Nazis - The Jewish Chronicle

It is a priceless masterpiece painted by the Jewish Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro from his hotel window in Paris in 1897 as he looked out at the street on a rain-swept afternoon.

But the oil painting, Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain, was seized by the Nazis in 1939 and is now at the heart of a legal fight which has rumbled on for nearly 20 years.

The tug of war has pitted Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, where it hangs on public view, against the heirs of its original Jewish owner who are fighting for its return.

Now a US Supreme Court hearing which began this week may be set to decide its future.
The painting is estimated to be worth around $30 million (£22m), according to art experts.

In 1939, Lilly Cassirer Neubauer was forced to sell the painting to the Nazis below its market value in a bid to obtain a visa to flee near-certain death. Around $360 was paid into an account she was blocked from accessing.

Decades later in 1958, Germany paid Ms Cassier-Neubauer $13,000 (£9,541) in reparations, though she retained her rights to the painting which was then thought lost.

The work was bought several times by various collectors over the years and was among a trove of 775 works sold to Spain in 1993 for over $300m (£220m).

Last year, a lower court in California ruled that the painting belonged to the museum under Spanish law.

The judge, John Walter, however also criticised Spain over its failure to comply with the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art.

A lawyer representing Ms Cassirer Neubauer’s heirs, Stephen Zack told the Guardian earlier this week: “This has been three generations of the Cassirer family trying to take back what is theirs.”

Mr Zack also told the newspaper: “Unlike many cases where there is a dispute about the facts, no one disputes the fact that this painting was owned by the Cassirers and was taken by the Nazis without compensation.

“Under California law, there’s no possibility of a person getting good title to a stolen piece of property.”

In a lengthy statement which was put out in October last year, the museum said that neither its foundation nor the painting’s previous owner, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, had any knowledge of its illegal past at the time that they purchased it.

The museum also said it “anticipates that its ownership of the painting – already recognised by the district court and the ninth circuit – will be affirmed”.

Pissarro, whose full name is Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro, was born to French Jewish parents on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas in the former Danish West Indies in 1830.

His father, Frederick Abraham Gabriel Pissarro, moved to the island to manage his late uncle’s affairs and married his widow, Rachel Manzano-Pomié, sparking consternation among the local Jewish community.

Pissarro later moved to Paris aged 25 , where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and Académie Suisse and went on to become a figure in impressionist and post-impressionist circles.

He was also among the supporters of Dreyfus when France was divided over the case.
Pissarro died in 1903 and was laid to rest at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery.