College wins battle against Holocaust survivor to keep $1.8m artwork stolen from her family by the Nazis

Léone-Noëlle Meyer says she signed deal with University of Oklahoma under duress

College wins battle against Holocaust survivor to keep $1.8m artwork stolen from her family by the Nazis (Musee d’Orsay)

An American university has won its fight with a French heiress to keep a Camille Pissarro painting stolen from her family by the Nazis.

Léone-Noëlle Meyer, 81, says she has ended her struggle with the University of Oklahoma after being threatened with heavy fines if she continued her legal battle.

Ms Meyer, a holocaust survivor, had fought for years to recover Pissarro’s La Bergère Rentrant des Moutons but admitted she was left with “no other choice” than to end her campaign.

Ms Meyer, who is the ninth richest woman in France with a personal wealth of more than $725m,  lost her mother, grandmother and older brother at Auschwitz when she was just a child.

She was then adopted from a Paris orphanage by Raoul and Yvonne Meyer at the age of seven.

When her adopted parents fled Paris during World War II they stashed the painting, along with a Picasso and a Renoir,  in a bank vault.

The Nazis then seized the artworks, with the looted Pissarro, which is worth an estimated $1.8m, falling into the hands of a Swiss art dealer.

“This work of art, which belonged to my adoptive parents, Yvonne and Raoul Meyer, was stolen from them by the Nazis during the occupation of France in 1941,” said Ms Meyer.

Raoul Meyer tried to get the painting back form the art dealer in 1953, but was told that his claim was too late.

The painting then disappeared until 1990 when Ms Meyer found out that it was at the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr Museum of Art, after it was donated by a family who had bought it from a dealer in New York.

Ms Meyer acknowledges that five years ago she signed an agreement with the university that would see the painting switch between the US and France every three years.

But she says that she was forced into the deal, which has been upheld by a court in Paris, under duress.

“I was called at 2 a.m. and my American lawyer put me under strong pressure to accept this deal. I didn’t have the choice,” she previously told the Le Monde newspaper.

The French court has ruled that her deal with the university overrides a 1945 law in the country that requires artwork stolen by Nazis to be returned to their original owners.

The painting is currently hanging at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.