Pissarro masterpiece travels a twisted history

Source: Los Angeles Times

The court challenges to recover a painting taken by the Nazis in 1939 have been as tortuous as its provenance.
By Carol J. Williams, April 7, 2010.
Reporting from La Mesa, Calif.

After a lunch of chopped egg and crackers, Claude Cassirer plants his walker on the worn floorboards of his tiny living room, rhythmically inching his way down the hall to his study. It is a short constitutional he takes each day to regard ... a copy of an Impressionist masterpiece, "Rue Saint-Honore, Apres Midi, Effet de Pluie,"by Camille Pissarro, which takes him back to his grandmother's lavishly furnished Berlin parlor in the 1920s. It was at the foot of the original painting depicting horse-drawn carriages on a rain-dappled thoroughfare that Cassirer played as a child ...

"My grandmother never knew what happened to the painting," Cassirer says of the 1897 Pissarro his great-grandfather, Julius, had purchased directly from the Caribbean-born Jewish artist. ... His grandmother ... left all she had to Cassirer -- the antique armoires ... , the porcelain dishes ... and the rights to the purloined Pissarro, should it ever surface. ... In 2000, ... an old customer ... said she had found it. ... it had been acquired by Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a Swiss art collector ... The Pissarro had been leased to the Spanish government ... ""Rue Saint-Honore" has been displayed ... near the famed Prado since then ... . With only meager savings at their disposal, the Cassirers turned to the World Jewish Congress for help in approaching the government of Spain, a signatory to agreements to restore Nazi-looted artworks to their rightful owners. "They have been most unfriendly, not cooperative in any way," Cassirer says of the Spaniards.

Cassirer filed suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in 2005 against the Kingdom of Spain and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation. Although Spain signed accords promising restitution to victims of Nazi art expropriations, the country and foundation have fought Cassirer on jurisdictional grounds, claiming the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act protects them from U.S. court proceedings. ... For nearly five years, lawyers and judges have debated that question, and also if Spain could be made to compensate for the wrongdoing of another country - Nazi Germany. ...Cassirer, who is hard of hearing and tires too easily even to travel to the court hearings in San Francisco, suffers no illusions about the likelihood of recovering the painting in his lifetime. "In a couple of weeks I am 89. This is of great concern to me," he says.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pissarro7-2010apr07,0,5838479.story

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Some Spaniards and Swiss-Germans are waiting for an old Jew to die, rather than return the stolen painting to him. In doing so, they resurrect the 1933-45 policies of Germany, Switzerland, and Spain.

The number of important artworks seized by the Nazis was enormous, and the suits are always very complicated--the deny and delay tactic makes all but the most tenacious give up.

Provenance after the war is irrelevant. There is almost always documentation of these forced "sales" -- and anyone who acquired a work after the war, either knowingly or innocently, should be required to cede it back to its rightful owners.

Spain, of course, is a signatory to such restitution accords. If jurisdiction is the problem, can there be found a party with "standing" in Spain who can sue on behalf of this gentleman?

Perhaps one or both of them could sue in the Spanish courts.

What goes on in the minds of these people, can't they work a deal of some sort and DO THE RIGHT THING! Dana ; )

http://www.museothyssen.org//THYSSEN/home
Looks like they have a contact form and are on Facebook and Twitter

The painting:
Search on the artist, then select Saint-Honoré Street in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain
Fecha:1897 Direct link wouldn't post for some reason, maybe because I used the English version?

associate of Prescott Bush?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyssen_family

At least if that's the same Fritz Thyssen you refer to.

Also, looks like the Baron died. Not sure which members of the family are involved in the Foundation, maybe his last wife and oldest son?

Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Hans_Heinrich_Thyssen-Bornemisza

http://www.barcelonareporter.com/index.php?/news/comments/stolen_pissarro_painting_court_questions_lawsuit_against_spain_over_art_sto/

Federal appeals court justices questioned whether a California man should go to courts in Spain and Germany before suing in the U.S. to recover from a Madrid museum a Pissarro painting that was stolen by the Nazis.

A lawyer for 88-year-old Claude Cassirer of Costa Mesa, California, whose grandmother was forced to surrender the painting when she fled Germany in 1939, was asked why his client’s U.S. lawsuit against Spain should go forward when he hadn’t first tried to get the painting back through legal proceedings in Spain and Germany.

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After World War II, the painting was sold at least three times before ending up with the collection of Baron Hans- Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Spain acquired the collection in 1993.


A different article has a differing (and likely more accurate)account:

http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050511/news_1n11claude.html

Cassirer (pronounced ca-SEE-er) said his grandmother was forced to sell the Pissarro painting to escape from Nazi Germany in 1939, a decision that probably saved her life. Her sister, Hannchen, died in a concentration camp.

Claude Cassirer was imprisoned in camps in France and Morocco before escaping and fleeing to the United States.


In his lawsuit, Cassirer said Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a Swiss industrialist and art collector, bought the painting from a New York dealer in 1976.

The Spanish government then bought the baron's art collection in 1993 for about $350 million and installed it in the Madrid museum and in a remodeled monastery near Barcelona.

and for your previous informative posts. There is a lot of material here to chew on.

I think they should do the right thing and return the painting to the family.

But sadly, I think your analysis in the OP is likely spot on.

Maybe if enough people contacted them and put some PR pressure on them, it could have some impact.

Publicity can sometimes get people to reconsider their position.

I am now wondering though, how many other paintings in that collection might have similar provenance.