Pissarro's Paris rain, claimed by the Cassirer heirs

In 1939 Lilly Cassirer, a Jewish woman living in Berlin, needed exit visas for herself and her husband, Otto Neubauer. She also owned a painting by Camille Pissarro. Jakob Scheidwimmer, a Berlin art dealer named by the Nazi government to value it, would not let her take it out of Germany. He demanded that she sell it to him for 900 Reichsmarks, about $360 at the time. The money went into a blocked account that she could not use. No party in the later case disputes that it was taken by force.

The painting is Rue Saint-Honoré, après-midi, effet de pluie, an oil of 81 by 65 centimetres, dated 1897. It is one of 15 views that Pissarro painted from a Paris hotel window in the winter of 1897 to 1898. A member of the Cassirer family bought it from his agent in 1900. Lilly inherited it in 1926 and showed it in her home.

Scheidwimmer then made another Jewish collector, Julius Sulzbacher, who also wished to leave, swap three German paintings for it. After the Sulzbacher family fled, the Gestapo confiscated the picture. The Ninth Circuit court says it allegedly went to a Nazi government auction in Düsseldorf. In 1943 an unknown seller sold it in Berlin for 95,000 Reichsmarks. In 1954 a US restitution court confirmed that Lilly owned it. In 1958 Germany paid her 120,000 Deutschmarks. All involved believed it lost or destroyed.

It had in fact reached the United States. Dealers sold it to a US collector for $14,850 in 1951. A St. Louis collector bought it for $16,500 in 1952. On 18 November 1976 Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a collector, bought it through a New York gallery for $275,000. On 21 June 1993 a foundation created and controlled by Spain bought his 775 works for a museum in Madrid. The district court gives the price as $338 million. The Ninth Circuit gives $350 million. The Pissarro had no separate price.

Lilly’s grandson Claude Cassirer learned in 2000 that the picture hung in the Madrid museum. Spain refused his petition in 2001. On 10 May 2005 he sued the foundation and Spain in a US court in Los Angeles. He died in 2010. His children, David and Ava Cassirer, and a San Diego Jewish federation, continued the claim.

The court steps ran in this order. On 4 June 2015 the trial court ruled that Spanish law applied and that the foundation had gained title by long possession. On 10 July 2017 the Ninth Circuit reversed this and ordered a trial. On 30 April 2019 the trial judge found that the foundation did not know of the theft in 1993, so it owned the picture. The Ninth Circuit affirmed on 17 August 2020. On 21 April 2022 the US Supreme Court vacated that result and did not decide who owns the picture. On 9 January 2024 the Ninth Circuit again held that Spanish law applied. One judge agreed in the result but wrote that it sat badly with her conscience. After California passed a law that favours claimants, the Supreme Court vacated the 2024 judgment on 10 March 2025 and sent the case back in light of that law. On 30 April 2025 the Ninth Circuit sent it to the trial court.

The Forward reports that the museum says it owns the picture and that its 1993 purchase showed no sign of bad faith. The family calls the picture looted. The case is still open. No ruling on ownership was found up to October 2026. The painting is on display in Madrid.