Pissarro’s painting, seized by the Nazis in 1941, will return to France Automatic translate

NORMAN. Settlement was reached in a restitution process instituted against the University of Oklahoma by Leon Meyer in May 2013, in relation to Camille Pissarro’s painting “La bergère rentrant des moutons” (Shepherd Managed with Sheep), written in 1886.

The entire Meyer family died in Auschwitz, shortly after the birth of Leon. The painting was part of a collection owned by his adoptive parents and seized by the Nazis in France in 1941.

The work, which has been hanging in the Fred Jones Museum at the Norman University of Art in Oklahoma since 2000, will return to France this summer. According to the agreement, the painting will be alternately located in the USA and in France for some time, until it is finally transferred to the French museum.

This is not the first litigation around this Pissarro painting. According to the lawyer, Leon Meirea’s father Raul filed a civil lawsuit in Switzerland in 1953 after he discovered that the painting was sold to Swiss art dealer Christoph Bernoulli. Raul Meyer, however, could not prove that Bernoulli acquired the painting dishonestly.

In 1956, "Shepherdess" was sold to the New York gallery of Aaron and Clara Weitzenhoffer (Aaron and Clara Weitzenhoffer), and in 2000 transferred to a university of 32 collections of impressionist paintings.

Leon Meyer, who had not given up hope of returning the masterpiece all these years, found La bergère rentrant des moutons in a database of more than 20,000 works seized by the Nazis from Belgian and French Jews during the occupation of these countries.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru