A French heiress and the University of Oklahoma amended an agreement on a piece of art that Nazis stole from France during World War II.
Leone Meyer, a Holocaust survivor, attained government documentation confirming Nazis stole an 1886 Camille Pissarro oil painting from her family decades ago.
Meyer’s family hid from German soldiers to avoid being placed in concentration camps, but Nazis managed to steal their belongings — including the painting La Bergère Rentrant des Moutons, or Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep.
The painting is worth an estimated $1.8 million, the Guardian reported.
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After the war ended in 1945, the painting went to a Swiss dealer before it was sold to Clara Weizenhoffer in New York.
The Weitzenhoffers donated their entire art collection to the University of Oklahoma’s campus museum in 2000, including the painting in question.
The Meyer family issued an open letter to the “People of Oklahoma” in 2014, pleading for the painting to be returned and noting her “entire biological family” was murdered in Auschwitz during the war.
The family fought for more than two years over who the rightful owner of the painting was before an agreement was made in 2016. The agreement allowed the painting to be on display for five years at the Musée d’Orsay in France before rotating back to the university.
The University of Oklahoma and OU Foundation “affirmed their original 2016 Settlement Agreement with a mutually agreed upon modification in order to achieve its goals,” according to their statement to KFOR.
“Ms. Meyer has transferred title, interests, and all standing in connection with the Pissarro painting to the OU Foundation. In turn, the OU Parties have committed to identifying and transferring ownership to a French public institution or the U.S. Art in Embassies program, subject to the parties’ original rotating three-year public display agreement,” the statement added.
The university does not plan to retain the title to the painting “long-term,” it said, noting the painting is on public display at the Musée d’Orsay.
Pissarro’s Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep will return to the university over the summer, where it will be on display for three years before rotating back to France.
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The Washington Examiner contacted the University of Oklahoma Fred Jones Art Museum but did not immediately receive a response.
