US Supreme Court revives case around ownership of Nazi-looted Pissarro painting in Spanish museum

The quest for the ownership of a French impressionist painting once stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish woman has been revived once again, following a decision from the United States Supreme Court.

The contentious piece of art is Camille Pissarro’s 1897 oil canvas “Rue Saint-Honoré, in the afternoon. Effect of rain", currently hanging in the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid. The piece depicts a rainswept Paris street and is part of a series of works made by Pissarro towards the end of his career. It is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

The Supreme Court said yesterday that the case should be reconsidered under a new California law aimed at strengthening the claims of Holocaust survivors seeking to recover Nazi-looted art. In doing so, the justices overturned previous lower court decisions that sided with the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum.

This is a major turnaround in one of the world’s oldest cases of legal action against Nazi art theft.

The painting was originally owned by German Jewish art collector Julius Cassirer, who bought it from Pissarro in 1900. On the eve of World War II, it was in the hands of his daughter-in-law, Lilly Cassirer Neubauer. She was forced to surrender the artwork to the Nazis, in exchange for visas to escape Germany with her husband.

The painting was sold at a Nazi government auction in 1943 and changed hands several times over the years, before the Spanish government bought it from Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza in the 1990s. It has since remained on display in Madrid.

Heirs of the Cassirer Neubauer family, who now live in California, first sued the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum for ownership in 2005, after discovering that the canvas had not in fact been lost.

Lilly Cassirer Neubauer’s great-grandson, David Cassirer, said in a statement that he was thankful to the Supreme Court “for insisting on applying principles of right and wrong.”

Throughout this case, the museum has repeatedly said it was not aware of the painting’s stolen status when its curators purchased it. A lawyer for the Thyssen-Bornemisza said the institution would continue working toward confirming the piece's ownership “as it has for the past 20 years.”

According to the Jewish Claims Conference, the Nazis seized about 600,000 artworks, cultural and religious items from Jewish people during the Holocaust.