Spain museum confident it can keep painting stolen by Nazis

By CIARÁN GILES
Associated Press

MADRID (AP) — A leading Spanish museum says it’s confident U.S. courts will again rule that a valuable French impressionist painting taken from a Jewish family by the Nazis belongs to the museum and not to the family’s descendants. Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum says Friday that, despite a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling that returns the case to lower courts, it was sure those courts would once again rule that Spanish law, rather than California law, should prevail. That would mean the painting, Camille Pissaro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain,” would remain at the Madrid museum. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Thursday keeps alive the hopes of San Diego resident David Cassirer of getting back the painting once owned by his great-grandmother.