A long legal battle over a Pissarro painting in an American museum collection was ended by a French woman in her 80s whose adoptive parents owned the work until Nazi occupation. Léone-Noëlle Meyer found out in 2012 that her family's Nazi-looted painting was held in the University of Oklahoma's Fred Jones Jr Museum, but the statute of limitations for her to reclaim it had expired, sparking legal wrangling for almost a decade. A US court said she had violated a settlement agreement .
BBC News
By Lucy Williamson
image captionParis under occupation: Nazi Germany controlled the French capital from June 1940
Eighty years ago, Nazi officers entered a local bank in a sleepy corner of south-west France, and raided a safe deposit box there.
Hidden inside, they found a stack of artworks, including a painting by Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro, showing a shepherdess bathed in warm light greeting her flock.
image copyrightPatrice Schmidt/Musée d Orsay
The painting had been hidden there by a Jewish couple, Raoul and Yvonne Meyer, the heirs of famous French department store Galeries Lafayette. It was 1941, and France had already been under German control for a year. The Pissarro canvas disappeared into Nazi custody.
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