Pissarro painting confiscated by Nazis at center of Supreme Court arguments [View all]

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Source: CNN

Pissarro painting confiscated by Nazis at center of Supreme Court arguments

By Tierney Sneed

Updated 3:10 PM ET, Tue January 18, 2022



The Impressionist painting by Camille Pissarro called the "Rue Saint-Honore apre-midi. Effet de Pluie (Rue Saint-Honore Afternoon, Rain Effect)," in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

(CNN) -- In a case involving a Nazi confiscation of a Jewish family's painting, the Supreme Court on Tuesday grappled with how federal courts should decide whether California law or a foreign country's law should apply. ... The case, which was filed in federal court in California, is now before the Supreme Court after nearly 17 years of litigation.

The descendants of Jewish Holocaust survivors are seeking the return of a painting that their family was forced to hand over to the Nazis and that eventually ended up in a public Madrid, Spain, art museum. ... The art piece at the center of the case is a 1897 French Impressionist work by the famed painter Camille Pissarro titled "Rue Saint Honoré, Afternoon, Rain Effect."

It was owned by the Cassirer family in Germany until 1939, when Lilly Cassirer Neubauer was forced to hand it over to the Nazis in order to obtain an exit visa she needed to flee the country. A Nazi art dealer confiscated the painting in exchange for $360 that was put in an account that Neubauer could not access. In the decades that followed, a series of sales and trades took the painting to California, then to a gallery in New York, from where it was purchased by a Swiss collector who eventually sold much of his collection, including the painting, to the foundation, which he set up with the Spanish government.

A lawyer for the art foundation, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, asked the Supreme Court to set out a "fair and balanced way" for federal courts to approach these kinds of cases, as different states have different legal tests that could be applied, depending on where the family had brought the case.

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Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/18/politics/pissarro-nazi-supreme-court/index.html