Saint Honoré, apres midi, effet de pluie by Camille Pissarro
The Supreme Court has, in just a few sentences, ruled in favor of a Holocaust survivor’s descendants in their efforts to regain their stolen Pissarro painting.
Over a year ago, I wrote about how a court in California ruled against the Cassirer family in their restitution case against Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. The family’s forebear, Lilly Neubauer, was a collector who owned the painting Rue Saint Honoré, apres midi, effet de pluie, created in 1897 by Camille Pissarro. The Nazi government forced her to sell the painting in exchange for visas for her family. In 1958, the West German government declared Neubauer was the painting’s rightful owner and granted her a large sum equivalent to about $250,000 today. In 1999, Neubauer’s grandson Claude Cassirer learned that the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum had his family’s painting. By 2001, he initiated legal proceedings to have the work returned. He filed a lawsuit against the museum and the Spanish government as per the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which provides legal immunity to foreign governments in American courts with several exceptions. One of those exceptions is if the suit involves “property taken in violation of international law.” The lawsuit went to the Supreme Court, then back to the lower courts, which decided that Spanish law should apply in this case rather than California law. Under Spanish law, an individual or entity may keep a previously stolen work if it was acquired and displayed in good faith for at least three years. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum insists they did their due diligence and had no knowledge that the painting was sold under duress. While the appeals court ruled that the museum does not have to do anything from a legal perspective, there is, of course, the ethical imperative to return the painting to the Cassirer family.
Soon after the lower court’s decision, the California state assembly quickly passed a law stating that California law must apply in cases involving stolen property due to political persecution. With this new law in effect, the Supreme Court issued a brief decision: “The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for further consideration in light of Assem. Bill 2867, 2023–2024.” This will send the lawsuit back to the lower courts, the same court that decided against the Cassirer family last year. However, with the new law in effect, it will likely turn out differently. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum will probably not be very enthused. In the two decades they have dealt with this lawsuit, they have continued to emphatically affirm that they are the rightful owners of the Pissarro.