Free Republic

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...

In 1939 Lilly Cassirer Neubauer was desperate to escape Germany. She was a member of a prominent Jewish family of publishers and gallery owners, and as the Nazi oppression escalated, it was clear they would have to leave or die. Lilly was told there was only one way for her to obtain an exit visa. The family would have to hand over one of their most prized possessions: a Parisian street scene painted by Camille Pissarro. The work, an atmosphere depiction of a rain-soaked Paris boulevard, had hung on the walls of the family's Berlin and Munich homes since the...