Camille Pissarro returns to the helm. Indeed, the impressionist painter is not an amateur litigant before the courts. Lately, numerous cases – all relating to grim episodes of the theft of Jewish cultural property – involving paintings by the Franco-Danish artist have shaken the law of the art market. Starting with the consecration last July by the Court of Cassation of the 1945 ordinance organizing the restitution to victims of property looted under the Occupation. In other words, spoliations are null and void as of right as are all subsequent assignments, regardless of whether the subsequent purchasers of the disputed property are in good or bad faith, believing that they have become the legal owners.
Under the terms of this decision and after years of legal battle, the collector Bruce Toll – who seeks compensation from France for violating his property and defense rights – was forced to return the famous painting to the Bauer family. Picking peas, looted in 1943 and seized in 2017 from the Marmottan-Monet museum during a retrospective dedicated to Pissarro.
Then, shortly after, last August, on the side of Spain and the Madrid Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, it was for a completely different outcome that the California Court of Appeal in Pasadena expressed itself. According to her and while the spoliation in 1939 by the Nazis of the painting Rue Saint-Honoré in the afternoon, Effect of the rain no doubt, the painting will remain the property of the Spanish museum and will not be returned to the heirs of the original owners stolen by the Germans, despite their objections.
Finally, this fall, it is the turn of a third work by Camille Pissarro to return to justice. This will decide the question of whether The Shepherdess returning from the sheep (1886), despoiled in 1941 and returned to the French heiress Léone-Noëlle Meyer – granddaughter of the founder of Galeries Lafayette – in 2016, who has already boldly fought in court, will be able to remain in France. As the painting is currently kept at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, it is due to return to the United States in 2021 under an agreement between the owner and an American museum to which the work has been bequeathed in the past by collectors. Today, Tuesday, December 15, the summary judge of the Paris court will rule on the sequestration of the web, requested by Léone-Noëlle Meyer. The American museum institution asks for the respect by Ms. Meyer of its commitment made four years ago.
© The Times of Israel
The hunt for the painting between Europe and the United States
The heiress Meyer is not at her first attempt before the judges and in order to understand the legal stake behind this new instance, it is necessary to go back a few years on the journey of the Bergère. While Nazi Germany occupies France, Léone-Noëlle’s adoptive father – whose family was exterminated in the Auschwitz camp – Raoul Meyer fled to the United States and left behind his collection of Impressionist art in a safe. The latter is forced and many canvases disappear, looted. Back in Europe after the war in 1945, the Meyers tried to recover their works. Many were quickly found but impossible to locate Shepherdess, which is missing.
In 1951, oil on canvas reappeared in Switzerland and Raoul Meyer brought an action for reparation. However, a Swiss court refuses to return the painting to him in favor of its current owners and a limitation period – of five years – has expired. “A total inconsistency”, for Ron Soffer, Léone-Noëlle Meyer’s lawyer, joined by Point. “How could Mr. Meyer have launched an action for restitution in the middle of the war?” This decision makes no sense, ”adds Me Soffer. Years pass, the Meyers die, but their adopted daughter continues the hunt. The painting can be found at David Findlay, a New York gallery owner – already involved in the sale of the Picking peas – who sells it to Aaron and Clara Weitzenhoffer, a couple of collectors from Oklahoma who made their fortune in black gold. In 2000 and before their death, they will donate their collection – which counts The Shepherdess returning from the sheep – at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma.
It was not until 2012 that Léone-Noëlle Meyer spotted her Bergère via Internet. She then initiated an action for restitution with the American university. A legal battle that will last three years, the heiress Meyer demanding the return of the looted painting. The governing bodies of the Oklahoma museum refuse, arguing that the canvas was bought legally and then bequeathed to them in good faith. Seeing that the case was getting bogged down, an amicable agreement was then negotiated between the parties and signed in 2016.
A perpetual rotation of the painting between Paris and Oklahoma
Under the terms of this unprecedented transaction – being the first international art sharing agreement between the United States and France – Léone-Noëlle Meyer, somewhat forced according to her counsel, Ron Soffer, was transferred the ownership of the work under conditions. According to article 5A of the contract, the painting, after five years of exposure in France – that is to say from July 2021 – will alternate every three years between the United States and France. Also, there is an obligation on the part of Léone-Noëlle Meyer to donate the canvas to a French museum during his lifetime or after his death, in which case the US State Department would become the owner. “My client therefore entered into a sort of membership contract, without having leverage on the university museum,” adds the lawyer.
Moreover, Léone-Noëlle Meyer has fulfilled her obligation, by choosing the Musée d’Orsay – where the painting is exhibited at the time this article is published – as a donee. Except that this one refused to integrate Shepherdess to its permanent collections because of the current disagreement between the parties and invoking the costs incurred for him by the perpetual obligation of rotation, without time limitation provided for in the 2016 agreement. “As a result, the economy of the contract no longer works, it is emptied of its meaning, ”adds Ron Soffer.
Starting from there and in order to get out of this “trap”, according to Soffer, the objective is to unravel the contract signed in 2016 by the parties. With regard to the judgments of the Court of Cassation last July concerning Picking peas and more recently from the Paris Court of Appeal last September on the return of Derain’s works to the Grimpel family and according to the ordinance of April 21, 1945, the American museum would have no right to the painting. Indeed, regardless of the legality through which the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art acquired the work, it cannot be the owner, previous sales of Shepherdess being forced and therefore null. “The University of Oklahoma cannot claim rights to something that does not belong to it anyway,” says Ron Soffer. Conversely and for its part, the American University Foundation maintains that Léone-Noëlle Meyer signed the contract knowingly and that the document was even registered in 2016 by the courts both in the United States and France. On November 20, a US court ordered the plaintiff to discontinue the proceedings she had initiated in breach of said contract. Léone-Noëlle Meyer appealed against this decision.
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