Return of art sold by Nazis holds up
A painting forcibly auctioned by Germany’s Nazi government should remain with the estate of a late Jewish art dealer who lost it when his gallery was liquidated, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston blocks an attempt by German baroness Maria-Luise Bissonnette to recoup the painting “Girl From the Sabine Mountains,” appraised between $67,000 and $94,000.
The painting is believed to be a work of Franz Xaver Winterhalter, a 19th century artist famous for painting Queen Victoria, the czar of Russia and other European nobles.
Last year, a federal judge in Providence, R.I., ordered Bissonnette to give the painting to the estate of Max Stern, who lost his family’s Dusseldorf art gallery when the Nazis forced its closure in 1937. Bissonnette then sought to overturn the lower court’s ruling.
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