Leone Meyer, the daughter of Raoul Meyer, a Jewish businessman who lived in Paris during the Nazi occupation, is suing Oklahoma University and its Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art over Camille Pissarro’s painting ‘Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep.’ Meyer claims that the work, which resides in the museum’s collection, was stolen from her father by the Nazis.
Before Paris fell under Nazi control, Raoul Meyer assembled a large collection of French Impressionist works that were later seized during the occupation. After World War II ended, Raoul spent years trying to reassemble his comprehensive collection. In 1953, he sued Christoph Bernoulli, a Swiss art dealer and then-owner of the Pissarro painting. The case was dismissed due to a statute of limitations on such cases and ‘Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep’ eventually made its way to an art gallery in New York where it was purchased by the oil magnate, Aaron Weitzenhoffer and his wife, Clara. Following Clara’s death in 2000, the painting was donated to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. The Weitzenhoffers’ son claims that his parents were unaware of the painting's troubled provenance.
So far, the university has refused to return the work to Meyer, citing the previous court ruling in Switzerland.
