The Lost Pissarro

 From Forward:

Twenty-two years ago, photographer Claude Cassirer received a call he never expected. His family’s long-lost Nazi-looted painting by the French-Jewish painter Camille Pissarro had been found. It was hanging in a Spanish museum. The painting, “Rue Saint-Honoré, Apres Midi, Effet de Pluie” depicts the grand avenues of modern Paris glistening during an afternoon rain. It was a prized possession of Claude’s grandmother, Lilly Cassirer.

Claude vividly remembered the painting, under which he would play with his toys as a child. An old family photograph shows the painting in Lilly’s Berlin apartment, prominently displayed in a gilded frame above a lush velvet settee.

Since the painting was discovered at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid in 2000, the Cassirers have been fighting to regain it. On Jan. 18, the painting will take center stage at the United States Supreme Court. At stake is more than the painting itself, now valued at over $30 million. The court could set new legal precedent as to whether looted art cases involving foreign nations will be determined under state or federal common law, and therefore whether a foreign nation’s laws on property trump both U.S. state laws and international doctrine. (Read more.)