American Couple Lose Appeal to Keep Pissarro Painting Looted by Nazis

The Nazis stole approximately 650,000 pieces of art during World War II and around 100,000 had not been returned by 2009, according to figures released at the Holocaust Era Assets Conference held in the Czech Republic that year. The Nazis and the Vichy regime pilfered 93 paintings from Jewish businessman Simon Baur in France, one of which his descendants will get returned – La Cueillette by Impressionist Camille Pissarro.

American couple Bruce and Robbi Toll purchased the painting in 1995 from auction house Christie’s in New York for $800,000, not realizing that the artwork was on a French registry of looted items. Last year the descendants of Simon Baur saw that the painting was part of an exhibit on Pissarro in Paris. In November, a French court accepted the argument that the Tolls had purchased the piece in good faith as they were patrons of Holocaust museums, but ruled that the painting belonged to Baur’s family by right.

On Tuesday an appeals court in France agreed with the trial court. The verdict paves the way for the Bauer family to retrieve the painting, which during the court case has been kept locked up by the Musee d’Orsay and Orangerie museums. That same day, the French government also decreed that the Commission for Compensating Looting Victims (CIVS) will now be able to launch an investigation on an individual’s request and recommend appropriate compensation.

See Agence France-Presse, American Couple Lose Appeal to Keep Pissarro Painting Looted by Nazis, The Telegraph, October 2, 2018.