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U.S. Court: Holocaust Survivor Can Sue Madrid Museum for Pissarro

Published: September 9, 2009
LOS ANGELES—The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a Holocaust survivor could continue his suit against the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid over a Camille Pissarro painting that he insists his grandmother sold under duress for just $360 in 1939. The 1897 painting, Rue St.-Honore, Apres-Midi, Effet de Pluie, could be worth as much as $20 million today.

Claude Cassirer first filed suit in 2005 after attempts to acquire the painting through the Spanish government were unsuccessful. He says that he only learned about the painting's location in 2000, when a family friend noticed it during a visit in Madrid. Thyssen-Bornemisza officials and the Spanish government maintain that the work was legally acquired through a New York art dealer in 1976. “It is ours until proven otherwise,” Carlos Fernandez de Henestrosa, the managing director of the Thyssen Foundation, which administers the museum, has said.

While some restitution claims over the estimated 650,000 works stolen by the Nazis have been resolved through private agreements, for now this appears to be one case that the courts will ultimately have to decide.

Read more at the Associated Press.

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