New California Law May End the Legal Dispute Over a Nazi-Looted Pissarro in Madrid

A bill signed into law this week by California Governor Gavin Newsom may signal the beginning of the end of a decades-long dispute between the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and the heirs of a Jewish collector over the rightful ownership of a work sold under duress during the Nazi regime.

In 1939, Lilly Cassirer Neubauer was forced to sell an 1897 oil by Camille Pissarro to a Nazi art appraiser in order to flee Germany before the impending war.

According to court documents, the Pissarro, titled Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain, fetched only $360 (modern USD). The work has been estimated to be valued in the “tens of millions” today.

The bill would clarify a murky point in the legal battle between Neubauer’s heir, David Cassirer, and the museum that stems from a provision in California law that can allow the laws of foreign governments to supersede state law. That provision has allowed the museum to keep the painting despite a prior Supreme Court ruling that the California law should apply to the case; that ruling was overturned earlier this year by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit.

The new law, which was jointly written by the Los Angeles-area Democrat and the co-chairs the California Legislative Jewish Caucus Assembly member Jesse Gabriel, proposes exceptions when the personal property in question was taken “as a result of political persecution”. In a statement, Newsom said that the state has a “moral and legal imperative” to return work stolen by Nazis to Holocaust survivors and their families.

The legal struggle over the Pissarro began in 2000, when Claude Cassirer, Lilly Cassirer Neubauer’s grandson and the father of David Cassirer, learned the painting existed. In 2005, after the museum refused to return the work – they claim the work was legitimately purchased and had no knowledge of its provenance – Cassirer filed a lawsuit. 

After Claude Cassirer passed away in 2010, his legal claim was picked up by David Cassirer, his daughter Ava’s estate, and the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County. 

Moving forward, the Cassirer has requested their claim to the Pissarro be kicked back to an 11-member panel of Ninth Circuit judges, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Gabriel told POLITICO that the Spanish government’s insistence that they retain the painting was  “incredibly shameful…They know and have conceded that it was stolen from this family. It’s time for that wrong to be righted.”