Rare Monet returned to family more than 80 years after it was stolen by Nazis

(CNN) — A Claude Monet pastel painting stolen by Nazis from a Jewish family during World War II, which vanished for decades only to show up with a Louisiana art dealer, was returned Wednesday in New Orleans to the descendants of its original owners.

“Bord de Mer” was one of Monet’s early works and valued at over $500,000 by a Houston gallery that had put it up for auction.

It had vanished for decades, and the FBI began investigating the pastel painting when it was listed for sale.

The original owners, a Jewish couple in Austria named Adalbert and Hilda Parlagi, purchased the Monet in 1936 to hang in their home. Two years later, US officials say, the Parlagis were forced to flee the Nazis. They left all of their belongings – including the Monet – in the warehouse of a Vienna shipping company and intended to either ship it to themselves or retrieve it later.

Before they could get the painting back, the German Gestapo seized everything that the Parlagis’ had hidden in that warehouse, US officials say. The Monet was then purchased at auction by a Nazi art dealer and disappeared in 1941.

More than 70 years later, the painting resurfaced at a 2016 impressionism exhibition in France. A New Orleans-based antiquities dealer purchased it then sold it to a couple in Washington state.

That couple listed it for sale in Houston but agreed to surrender it to the FBI last year after learning of its “looted history,” the bureau said.

Since then, the FBI has been working to return the Monet to the Parlagi’s granddaughters, one of whom lives in France and the other in Spain, and the handoff was made Wednesday.

“Our grandfather would have been so happy to find out this Monet was being restituted after all his attempts over the years,” the granddaughters said in a statement released by the Commission for Looted Art in Europe. “This is a very moving and exceptional day for us, a day neither of us thought would ever happen.”

The Parlagi family is still searching for several other art pieces stolen by the Nazis, including a signed Paul Signac watercolor from 1903 that was sold to the same Nazi art dealer as the Monet.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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