A Paris appeals court on Tuesday upheld a ruling ordering an American couple to return a painting by Danish-French Impressionist master Camille Pissarro to the descendants of a Jewish family who had owned it before it was seized during World War II.
Prominent Philadelphia collectors Bruce and Robbi Toll had loaned the 1887 painting "La Cueillette des Pois" ("Picking Peas") to a Paris museum for an exhibition last year. But it was placed in temporary escrow after one of the heirs of the Jewish family recognized it and sued to get it back.
The Tolls, who are also Jewish, said that when they bought the Pissarro more than 20 years ago, they did not know it had been stolen by France's wartime Vichy regime from Jewish collector Simon Bauer. They purchased the painting for $800,000 at a Christie's auction in 1995.
The lawyer representing Bauer's descendants, Cedric Fischer, said Tuesday's ruling "sanctions the right of the victims of acts of barbarity committed by the Vichy regime to recover, without limit of duration, the goods they have been dispossessed of."
A civil court last year ruled that the Tolls had acted in good faith when they bought the painting. But it said that sales of all goods looted from Jewish people by the Nazis or the Vichy regime during the war had been declared void by the French authorities after the war in 1945.
The judges did not award any financial compensation to the couple.
The Bauer family had previously received just over €109,000 ($126,000) in compensation for losing the painting. Fischer said Tuesday that his clients have committed to return that money once they have the painting back.
The painting was confiscated by French authorities after Bauer's relatives found out it was on display in Paris as part of an exhibition and filed a lawsuit to have it returned.
In his statement, Fischer said his clients were hoping the Tolls would "respect the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal and not to keep going with the procedures which only aggravate the harm they have suffered."
The Tolls were unavailable for comment.
Bauer's collection of more than 90 paintings was confiscated in 1943 by the Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis, and sold by a vendor designated by the General Commissariat for Jewish Questions.
After Simon Bauer's death in 1947, his grandson Jean-Jacques began the search for the stolen art. He has recovered only a few pieces.
According to Fischer, the painting is now worth about $1.75 million, the price paid by the Tolls for its insurance. He said the painting was first bought by Theo van Gogh, the brother of painter Vincent van Gogh, who had purchased it from Pissarro himself.
