PARIS: A French court on Thursday ordered a painting by French impressionist Camille Pissarro be returned to the descendants of its rightful owner after Nazis stole it during World War II.

Banker and art collector Salomon Flavian bought the 1902 painting, Fishing dock and Duquesne basin, in 1935 before the Nazis seized it in 1941 when they occupied part of France. An unknown buyer in 2024 bought it for $1.6 million at auction at Sotheby’s in London.

The Paris court found “all successive sales of the disputed painting since its spoliation” to be null and void, and “ordered the restitution of the work, wherever and in whoever’s possession it may be found,” to Flavian’s descendants, according to a ruling.

It ordered Sotheby’s to disclose to Flavian’s family the identity of the buyer from the 2024 sale within two months, subject to a penalty of $1,120 for each day beyond that deadline. Several artworks stolen by the Nazis from Jewish families have been at the centre of court cases in Europe in recent years. This is just the latest involving a Pissarro painting.

In 2021, a Berlin museum handed back then repurchased another Pissarro work, A Square in La Roche Guyon. That same year, a French Holocaust survivor who spent years trying to win back Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep, renounced her claim to the work to end a feud with an American university. She had been recognised as its rightful owner in 2016.

In 2020, France’s top appeals court rej­ected a bid by an American couple to keep Picking Peas so that the descendants of the Jewish businessman who originally own­ed it could reclaim the painting.

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2026