California to aid Jewish family seeking return of Nazi-looted artwork from Spain
By intervening, California aims to defend a recent law broadening the rights of heirs to recover property taken under politically oppressive regimes.
Law and Crime
California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a motion Monday to intervene in a decades-long federal court case of a Jewish family seeking the return of a Nazi-looted artwork by French impressionist Camille Pissarro from Spain.
By joining the case, California also seeks to defend its own interests after the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation challenged the constitutionality of a law California passed last year expanding legal avenues for residents and their heirs to reclaim artwork and other personal property stolen through political persecution, including Nazi-looted art.
The law states that California courts must apply California substantive law when deciding cases involving art or property stolen through political persecution. It prevents museums, dealers, or collectors from arguing that they acquired good title simply because they purchased the item in good faith or held it for a long time.
It also provides people with a new legal pathway to sue, allowing them to reopen previously dismissed cases and refile them within two years of the law's effective date or the date their earlier case was fully resolved, whichever is later.
The California case centers on Pissarro’s 1897 oil painting Rue Saint-Honore, apres-midi, effet de pluie, stolen by the Nazi regime in 1939.
After Pissarro made the work, the artist sold it in 1898 to his friend and representative, French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who in turn sold it that same year to Jewish collector Julius Cassirer, according to court documents. When Julius Cassirer died in 1924, the painting passed to his son, Fritz. It then passed to Fritz’s wife, Lilly Cassirer, in 1926.
Lilly Cassirer later remarried and was forced to sell the painting to an official Nazi appointed appraiser when fleeing Nazi Germany with her new husband and grandson, Claude Cassirer.
Claude Cassirer first filed the lawsuit seeking restitution of the painting in 2005 after learning it was acquired by the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in 1993 and housed in Madrid. Over time, the case progressed through the judicial system and, in 2022, was remanded to the Ninth Circuit by the U.S. Supreme Court for additional review.
After the case returned to the Ninth Circuit, a court panel held that Spanish law applied. The Cassirers then filed a petition for the full circuit court to hear the case, which declined just before California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law requiring courts to apply California law to such claims.
The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently vacated the Ninth Circuit’s decision and ordered the case to be reconsidered. It is currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
“The California Attorney General’s Office has supported the Cassirer family in their legal effort to secure the return of this painting for more than 20 years,” the office of the California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.
Bonta added that the state law enacted last year “is about fairness, moral and legal responsibility, and doing what’s right.”
Follow along with other lawsuits at Urgent Matter's art lawsuit tracker.
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