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"Pissarro Painting Looted by Nazis to be Returned to Rightful Owners"
A Camille Pissarro painting is to be returned to its rightful owner's descendants, after experts determined that it was looted by the Nazis.
An official German task force had already found that works by Max Liebermann, Henri Matisse and Carl Spitzweg, which had been in an art trove hoarded by the late collector Cornelius Gurlitt, were looted.
Restitution agreements for the first two were signed last month, and the Culture Ministry has now confirmed that experts have established without doubt that Pissarro's 'The Seine seen from the Pont-Neuf, the Louvre in the background' was also looted.
In February 2014 one of Pissarro's paintings, the 1897 'Le Boulevard de Montmartre, Matinée de Printemps', originally owned by a German industrialist and Holocaust victim, sold at Sotheby's in London for £19.9m.
The Max Liebermann painting 'Zwei Reiter am Strande' ('Two Riders on the Beach') is amongst those being returned
It is in touch with the owner's heir, whom it did not identify, with a view to restitution "as quickly as possible".
A Swiss museum that accepted Gurlitt's collection has promised to ensure that any Nazi-looted pieces are returned to Jewish owners' heirs.
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