Spanish museum confident it can keep painting stolen by Nazis
FILE – This May 12, 2005 file photo shows an unidentified visitor looking at the Impressionist painting titled ‘Rue St.-Honoré, Afternoon, Rain Effect’ painted in 1897 by Camille Pissarro, on display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. Lilly Cassirer handed over Camille Pissarro’s priceless painting of her family to the Nazis in exchange for safe passage out of Germany during the Holocaust. The Supreme Court hears the case regarding the stolen artwork. (AP Photo/Mariana Eliano, File)
PA
MADRID
A leading Spanish museum said Friday it was confident US courts would rule again that a valuable French Impressionist painting once taken from a Jewish family by the Nazis belonged to the museum, not the family’s descendants.
In a statement on Friday, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum said that despite a new decision by the United States Supreme Court which sent the case back to lower courts, it was certain that those courts would again decide that Spanish law , rather than California law, should prevail.
This would mean that the painting, “Rue Saint-Honoré in the afternoon, rain effect” by Camille Pissaro, should remain in the hands of the Madrid museum where it currently hangs. The painting was estimated at over $30 million.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday to send the case back to appeals courts has kept alive San Diego resident David Cassirer’s hopes of reclaiming the streetscape that belonged to his great-grandmother. .
US lower courts have previously held that Spanish property law and not California law should ultimately govern the case and that under Spanish law the museum was the rightful owner of the painting, which the family believed for more than half a century lost or destroyed.
Appeals courts will now decide whether California state law, rather than federal law, can override Spanish law. This could overrule previous decisions.
The Thyssen Museum said Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said during the hearing that the next ruling would likely again be in favor of the Spanish museum.
Cassirer’s great-grandmother, Lilly Cassirer, a German Jew, owned the 1897 oil painting. After the Nazis came to power, Cassirer and her husband fled Germany. In 1939, in order to obtain visas to leave, she gave up Pissarro’s painting to the Nazis.
The painting changed hands several times thereafter.
In 1958, Lilly Cassirer reached a monetary settlement with the German government worth around 232,000 euros ($250,000) today, but she did not waive her rights to try to sue the painting if she introduced herself.
Rather than being lost or destroyed, the painting had traveled to the United States, where it spent 25 years in the hands of various collectors before being purchased in 1976 by Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza of Lugano, Switzerland. . He owned it until the 1990s, when he sold much of his art collection to Spain.
