French court set to rule on ownership of Nazi-looted Pissarro painting

A painting by impressionist master Camille Pissarro that was seized from its French Jewish owner during World War II is at the center of a court battle beginning tomorrow in Paris after surfacing at an exhibition.

“La Cueillette des Pois” (Picking Peas), a gouache from 1887, emerged earlier this year on display at the French capital’s Marmottan Museum, more than 70 years after being snatched from art collector Simon Bauer in Nazi-occupied France.

Tomorrow, a court will begin examining who are the rightful owners — Bauer’s descendants or an American couple who say they had no idea as to its wartime fate when they bought it at auction in 1995.

Bauer, a self-made businessman, was among the thousands of French Jews who were rounded up for deportation in 1944. He narrowly escaped being sent to the Nazi death camps due to a train drivers’ strike.

“La Cueillette des Pois” was one of 93 works that were confiscated from him before he was sent to the Drancy internment camp near Paris and sold on by an art dealer.

In May, a court granted Bauer’s grandson’s request to have it impounded in France pending a ruling on its on ownership.

— AFP