High court hears case involving painting stolen by Nazis

WASHINGTON (AP) — A California man and a Spanish museum locked in a dispute over a valuable impressionist masterpiece stolen by the Nazis should be able to agree on one thing, Justice Stephen Breyer said Tuesday during arguments in the case at the Supreme Court.

“Can everyone agree that this is a beautiful painting?" Breyer asked near the end of an hour of arguments. The painting is a streetscape, now worth millions, by French impressionist Camille Pissarro.

The case itself is not directly about ownership of the painting but about how to decide the case, which has been going on since 2005. Lower courts had sided with the museum.

On the other side is San Diego resident David Cassirer. His great-grandmother Lilly Cassirer Neubauer, a German Jew, at one time owned the Pissarro oil painting. The 1897 piece, whose title translates to "Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain," is one of a series of 15 that Pissarro painted of a Paris street as seen from his hotel window.

In 1939, in order to get visas for herself and her husband to leave Germany, Neubauer was forced to surrender the piece to a Nazi art appraiser. She was paid about $360, well below the painting's value, and the money went into an account she was blocked from accessing.

The painting changed hands a number of times since then but is now in the collection of a Spanish museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, which has fought to retain it. It has been said to be worth more than $30 million.

Lower courts found the museum to be the lawful owner of the painting while also criticizing Spain for not living up to commitments to return Nazi-looted art.

Even if Cassirer wins at the high court, and he has the backing of the Biden administration, a lower court decision saying Spanish law...