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The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the case should be reopened under a new California law designed to support Holocaust survivors in their efforts to recover art looted by the Nazis. This decision ensures that the lower court rulings, which favored the museum, would be reconsidered.

This piece of art, which depicts a rainy Paris street, is valued at tens of millions of dollars and represents a significant point in Pissarro’s late-career works. The painting originally belonged to Julius Cassirer, a German Jewish art collector, who purchased it directly from Pissarro in 1900.

Lilly Cassirer Neubauer, Julius Cassirer’s daughter-in-law, was later forced to give up the painting to the Nazis in exchange for visas to escape Germany. The artwork was auctioned off by the Nazis in 1943 and changed hands multiple times before being bought by the Spanish government from Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza in the 1990s.

The Cassirer Neubauer family, now residing in California, initially filed a lawsuit against the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in 2005, after learning that the painting had not been lost. David Cassirer, the great-grandson of Lilly Cassirer Neubauer, expressed gratitude for the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold principles of right and wrong.

The museum consistently maintained its lack of awareness of the painting’s stolen history at the time of purchase. It has vowed to continue its efforts to establish the painting’s ownership, as it has done throughout the past 20 years of the case.

The Jewish Claims Conference reports that during the Holocaust, the Nazis confiscated around 600,000 artworks, cultural, and religious items from Jewish individuals.

Additional sources ⢠AP