The Jewish Cassirer family was looking for a way to leave Germany in 1939. A painting by Camille Pisarro saved their lives and they were able to flee the Nazi horror. Now and after years of judicial dispute, a US court has ruled that the Rue Saint-Honoré in the afternoon. Rain Effect (1897) belongs to the Thyssen Museum even though it was stolen by the Nazis in Germany from its original owners.
The ruling puts an end to a legal dispute that began in 2005 when the American citizen Claude Cassirer filed a lawsuit against the Spanish State to demand the return of that Pissarro painting that had belonged to his family. As noted in the original lawsuit filed in California, his grandmother, Lilly Cassirer Neubauer, “was forced to hand over the Pisarro to an official expert appointed by the Nazis” and received a symbolic amount.
After the war, Lilly Cassirer judicially claimed the painting and in 1958 the then German federal government recognized her as its legal owner and gave her 120,000 marks as compensation.
The painting changed hands several times until in 1976 Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, purchased the work from a gallery in New York. Subsequently, in 1993, the Spanish State acquired the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, made up of 775 works, including that of Pissarro, for 263 million euros.
“Rue Saint-Honoré in the afternoon. Rain effect belongs to a series of fifteen works that Camille Pissarro painted in Paris from the window of his hotel located on the place du Théâtre Français, during the winter of 1897 and 1898,” explains the art gallery on its website, in the space dedicated to this oil painting, exhibited in room 33. Along with the description of the canvas, a link leads to a document in which the museum explains the judicial process.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals justified the decision by pointing out that it is preferable to apply Spanish laws to Californian laws to determine ownership of the work ‘Rue Saint-Honoré, après midi, effet de pluie’, so it will remain in possession. from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.
After hearing the ruling of the Californian court, Thyssen sources told EFE that the ruling is “positive” because “it agrees with the museum in the arguments it has maintained from the beginning of this entire process.”
The ruling indicates that “the application of California laws would significantly harm the interests of the Spanish Government, while the application of Spanish laws would only relatively minimally harm the interests of the California Government.”
“Under the California choice of law test, therefore, we decided that Spanish law be applied to determine ownership of the painting. And under Article 1955 of the Spanish Civil Code, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection has acquired ownership mandatory nature of painting,” the court concluded.
