The canvas "Rue Saint-Honoré, in the afternoon. Rain effect", painted in 1897, is, like other works by the impressionist, at the heart of a long legal battle with international ramifications.

This painting, which shows horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians busying themselves at a Parisian crossroads, belonged in 1937 to a German Jew, Lilly Cassirer Neubauer, who had been forced to give it up to a Nazi official in exchange for documents allowing her to leave the city. 'Germany

She had then lost track of the painting, sold at auction in Berlin during the Second World War.

In 1958, she had accepted financial compensation, awarded by a German court, without giving up her rights.

It was not until 2000 that one of his descendants located the work: Claude Cassirer learned that the painting, which he had seen as a child in his grandmother's living room, was exhibited in Madrid, at the Thyssen- Bornemisza.

The Spanish government bought it seven years earlier from Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen Bornemisza, heir to the industrial empire of the Thyssen family and great art collector, who had bought it himself in the United States in the 1970s without knowing its history.

Claude Cassirer therefore asks the Spanish government to return the work, but is refused.

Based in California, he filed a complaint in 2005 before a US federal court.

He has since died and his children have taken over.

The file then stretches on the two continents, with decisions of the Spanish justice and the American justice unfavorable to the heirs.

Tuesday's hearing at the Supreme Court represents their last hope.

The debates focused on a legal question: is it Spanish law -- according to which an owner is not obliged to return a looted property if he was unaware of its origin at the time of purchase -- or Californian law -- which does not take into account the good faith of the owner -- which applies in this file?

The judges, who during the hearing focused on very technical points not even mentioning the work in question, will render their decision in a few months.

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis stole, looted, seized or destroyed 600,000 works of art in Europe, according to a US Congress report.

Despite restitution efforts, conflicts are frequent between old and new owners, and the courts on both sides of the Atlantic are regularly called upon to intervene.

In addition to the "Rue Saint-Honoré" painting, other paintings by Pissaro have been the subject of intense legal disputes, including "La Cueillette des Pois" - over which a couple of American collectors and a family French Jew --, or "The Shepherdess bringing in her sheep" -- an heiress who finally renounced her rights in favor of the University of Oklahoma.

© 2022 AFP