U.S. judge rules Spanish museum can keep Pissarro confiscated by Nazis

A Madrid museum cannot be forced to return a Camille Pissarro painting that was seized by the Nazis from its Jewish owners during World War Two, despite the institution’s failure to honor its “moral commitments,” a federal judge in California has ruled.

U.S. District Judge John Walter said he was bound by Spanish law in the nearly two-decade fight between heirs of Lilly Cassirer and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (TBC) over the Paris street scene painted by Pissarro in 1897.