A painting by Camille Pissarro in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is under renewed scrutiny over the circumstances of its sale by its former owner, the department store magnate and art collector Max Julius Braunthal.
As reported by the New York Times, seven of Braunthal’s heirs have filed suit in a French court, alleging that the painting, Haystacks, Morning, Eragny (1899), was sold under duress in 1941. The Met maintains that Braunthal received fair market value for the work, which depicts several domed haystacks in a verdant, tree-filled meadow in Eragny, the village northwest of Paris where Pissarro lived from 1884 until his death in 1903.
Braunthal’s heirs cite a 2023 French law stating that all art sales made by Jews during the Nazi occupation of France are to be considered null and void. Braunthal sold Haystacks, Morning, Eragny for 100,000 francs to Paul Durand-Ruel’s gallery during that period.
The law allows “stolen art, books, and other cultural property in France’s inalienable public domain—even work looted beyond its borders—to be returned to its rightful owners,” Devorah Lauter reported in ARTnews.
The plaintiffs argue that whether the 1941 price reflected fair market value is irrelevant under the 2023 law. Art law experts told the Times, however, that a favorable ruling for the Braunthal heirs in French court would not compel the Met to immediately return the painting; the heirs would still need to persuade a US court to enforce the French judgment—unless the Met were to appeal the decision in France. One lawyer noted that if the French court were to nullify the original sale, it would nonetheless constitute significant evidence should the family pursue a new case in the United States.
Among the evidence cited to support the claim that Haystacks, Morning, Eragny was sold under duress and below market value is the fact that Durand-Ruel resold the painting just two weeks later to the German collector Wolfgang Krueger for 140,000 francs.
The painting entered the Met’s collection through Douglas Dillon, the museum’s former board chair, who bequeathed it to the institution in 2003, the year of his death. Dillon had purchased the work from Knoedler Gallery in 1959.
