A French appeals court ruled against an American couple that sought to get back the 1887 painting called La Cueillette des Pois ("Picking Peas") by Camille Pissarro that was looted from a Jewish collector during the Holocaust.
The court upheld an earlier ruling that the painting should be returned to the family of the collector, Jewish businessman Simon Bauer, according to the text seen by AFP on Wednesday.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
Purchasers Bruce and Robbi Toll of the Philadelphia area, who are also Jewish, claimed that they didn't know the painting was stolen when they bought it in New York for $800,000 back in 1995.
The Vichy regime in France during the war collaborated with the Nazis and stole 93 paintings from Bauer, according to the report. Some of the paintings were returned to him after the war, though died in 1947, before he was able to retrieve La Cueillette.
Pissarro was born on Nov. 13, 1903 on St. Thomas in the Caribbean. His father was of Portuguese Jewish descent and held French nationality; his mother was from a French Jewish family from the island of St. Thomas. Few of Pissarro's paintings sold during his lifetime.
In a related development across the Atlantic, the US Supreme Court agreed Thursday to hear a case involving the descendants of a group of Jewish art dealers from Germany who say their ancestors were forced to sell a collection of religious art to the Nazi government in 1935.
The justices will decide whether the dispute involving foreign citizens suing a foreign government belongs in US courts. A lower court allowed the case to go forward, but Germany asked the Supreme Court to weigh in.
The justices also took a case involving Hungarian nationals suing Hungary over property taken from them during World War II.
In the case involving Germany, the group of people who sued are descendants of art dealers who in 1929 together bought a collection of religious artworks from the 11th to 15th centuries known as the Guelph Treasure. The collection is known in German as the Welfenschatz. An appeals court in Washington allowed the case to go forward in 2018.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
In a statement, Nicholas M. O'Donnell, who represents the heirs of the art dealers, said that: "Germany seeks to eliminate recourse for Nazi-looted art and the Court will have the chance to answer this question of critical importance for Holocaust victims."
Jonathan Freiman, one of Germany's lawyers, said in an email: "We're glad that the Supreme Court will hear the case and look forward to explaining why this dispute doesn't belong in a US court."
Part of this article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
