An 1886 Impressionist painting by Camille Pissarro entitled “Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep” became a tug-of-war between the University of Oklahoma and a French Holocaust survivor who claimed it was stolen
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Léone Meyer in 2015. Photo by Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images.
During the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazis stole the French Impressionist painting from the bank where the Meyer family was storing it when they fled the country.
Meyer’s biological family was killed at Auschwitz, but the now 81-year-old was adopted by Holocaust survivor Raoul Meyer, who attempted to recover his looted collection. Unfortunately, the theft occurred in 1941, and by the time he found the Pissarro painting, in Geneva in 1951, Swiss courts had dismissed his case because the statute of limitations had expired.
Aaron and Clara Weitzenhoffer, who had purchased the painting in good faith, were found to be its lawful owners. In 2012, Léone Meyer tracked down the painting again, this time at the University of Oklahoma, where Clara Weitzenhoffer had donated it in 2000.
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Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro’s tiny
La Bergère Rentrant des Moutons (Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep) has for years been the subject of a three-way tug of war between a museum in France, a university in Oklahoma and the daughter of its original Jewish owners.
When they fled France during the Second World War, wealthy Parisians Raoul and Yvonne Meyer entrusted their art to their bank, but in 1941 Nazi officers managed to loot the lot. Upon returning to Europe in 1945, Raoul was able to recover much of his vast collection, Artnet.com says. However, by the time he tracked down