The future ownership of a French impressionist painting, once stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish woman, is once again uncertain after the US Supreme Court on Monday revived a legal battle over the artwork.
At the heart of the dispute is whether Camille Pissarro’s ‘Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain’ should remain in the prominent Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, where it is currently on display* – or be returned to the descendants of its original owner.
The US Supreme Court ruled that the case should be reconsidered under a California law passed last year, which aims to strengthen the ability of Holocaust survivors and their families to reclaim stolen art. This decision overturns previous rulings by lower courts that had sided with the Madrid museum.
Painted in 1897, the oil artwork portrays a rainy Parisian street scene and is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.
The painting once belonged to Lilly Cassirer Neubauer, a German Jewish woman who was forced to hand it over to the Nazis in exchange for exit visas for herself and her husband to flee Germany.
Over the years, the painting changed hands multiple times, eventually arriving in the United States, where it remained for 25 years with various collectors. In 1976, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza of Lugano, Switzerland, purchased the artwork. He later sold (and lent) much of his collection, including this painting, to the Spanish state during the 1990s, forming the museum in his name in the Spanish capital.
David Cassirer, Neubauer’s great-grandson and a resident of California, expressed gratitude for the US Supreme Court’s decision. In a statement on Monday, he said he was thankful to the court ‘for insisting on applying principles of right and wrong’. Cassirer took on the legal fight after his father, Claude Cassirer, discovered the painting on display in the Madrid museum. Claude passed away in 2010.
A lawyer representing the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, Thaddeus Stauber, said that the foundation remains committed to defending the museum’s ownership. He added that the Supreme Court’s decision provides ‘a first opportunity to examine the new California law and what effect it could have on the museum’s repeatedly affirmed rightful ownership’.
The case now returns to the lower courts for further review under the updated legal framework.
*The museum’s website currently states that the painting is ‘not on display’. For further background information, click here for the museum’s PDF on the ‘The case of Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation Collection in the US’.
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