The legal battle surrounding Camus Pissarro’s painting “Picking Peas”

From February 23 to early July 2017, the Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris hosted exhibition Dedicated to Camille Pissarro, “Pissarro, First of the Impressionists.” You can read about her and the life of the famous painter atThis article.

This article will report on the trials and tribulations of the painting “Gathering Peas,” also called simply “Gathering,” a gouache painting on paper by Pissarro in 1887 that was the property of art collector Simone Bauer.

Legal battles have raged over at least two other Pissarro paintings, but this article will focus on the story of this painting, which is related to the exhibition at the Marmottan Monet.

Who was Simon Bauer?

Simon Bauer, a French Jew born in 1862 in Alsace, the son of a cloth merchant, was an avid and knowledgeable art collector who made a fortune from shoe manufacturing, and was the father of five children.

He began his career as a delivery boy in a Paris store and continued as a shoe salesman until he established his own thriving business. At the age of 40 he sold it in part, enjoyed the profits and set out to travel the world and acquire an education, having never finished school. In 1911 he returned to Paris and joined the board of directors of the Galeries Lafayette, where he served for about a decade.

Simon Bauer, an autodidact, bought 93 paintings, mostly Impressionists, including 11 Pissarros, 4 Sisleys, 4 Bodins, 1 Degas, 1 Morisot. He acquired Pissarro’s “Picking Peas” from the renowned art dealer Paul Rosenberg (journalist Anne Sinclair is his granddaughter).

holocaust

In 1943, the painting “Pea Picking” was stolen from Simon Bauer, along with the rest of his prestigious collection, which was confiscated by the “General Office for Jewish Affairs,” a body established by the Vichy government under the supervision of the SS to coordinate the “handling of the Jewish problem.”

This body appointed an art dealer who sold Bauer's collection. The painting "Peas Gathering" was sold to a woman named Madame Adeline and has since passed through many hands.

Simon Bauer was imprisoned in the Drancy transit camp in July 1944 and miraculously escaped being sent to his death thanks to a strike by railway workers. By the time of his death in 1947, Bauer had managed to recover only a small part of his looted collection. His descendants continued the mission. They lost all traces of the painting “Piping Peas.”

Not quite. In 1965, Jean-Jacques Bauer learned from an art magazine publisher that “Picking Peas,” along with another Pissarro from his grandfather’s collection, was about to be sold by a Parisian woman to an American gallery owner. Jean-Jacques obtained a seizure order, the paintings were seized from a Paris hotel room , and the art dealer was arrested.

But in those days and until recently, it was difficult to move the judges on this matter, explains Jean-Jacques. As if he had no right to demand the return of the stolen property, as if he should be ashamed of it, as if a mark of disgrace had been stamped on his forehead.

The seizure order was indeed lifted by a judge. Jean-Jacques was filled not with grief but with nausea. The pictures were returned to the New York gallery owner, who had left Paris with them. “Pea Picking” was sold a few months later at Sotheby’s in London and disappeared again. Until, in 2017, it reappeared in Paris. Miracles and wonders against a tragic backdrop.

A dramatic turning point – the loan of the painting “Piping Peas” to the Pissarro exhibition

In 2017, Simon Bauer's grandson, 90-year-old Jean-Jacques Bauer (born 1929), learned that the lost painting was being displayed in the retrospective exhibition at the Marmottan Monet Museum.

At their luxurious Palm Beach villa, Bruce and Ruby Toll enjoyed viewing Pissarro’s “Peas Picking,” a rural scene. For more than twenty years, the image of women laboring in the peaceful fields has adorned the wall of their home.

The Tolls bought the painting at a branch of Christie's, the auction house, in New York in 1995 and paid $000 for it. Bruce is worth a billion, as the Americans say. He and his brother Robert founded a real estate company in 800, based on a plot of land in Pennsylvania that their father had given them. The business prospered. In more than twenty states in the United States, the Toll brothers are building luxurious homes and, more recently, assisted living and high-rise buildings.

Bruce Toll invests his accumulated wealth in many fields, high-tech, biotech, automobiles, and donates to innovative medical centers and museums. Bruce is active at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. His wife, Ruby, is an interior designer and active at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. The couple has four daughters.

Bruce and Ruby, friends of Donald Trump, supporters of the Republican Party, well-known philanthropists in the US, pillars of the Jewish community, also donate to museums and institutions in Israel, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Bruce and Ruby have a collection of 200 magnificent and diverse masterpieces in which French painters, Gustave Caillebotte, Berthe Morisot, occupy a favorite place. Connoisseurs know that there is nothing like French art to complete the pleasures of life and add a touch of tenderness to them.

They have already generously and proudly lent “Pea Picking” to temporary exhibitions in museums in the US, Canada, and Japan. Without hesitation, they lent it again this time and again to the Marmottan Museum in Paris for the grandiose exhibition. Everything was meticulously planned and arranged in advance, the picture’s journey from Florida to Paris, the insurance premium of $1.75 million, which even included coverage for terrorism.

Bruce and Ruby Tolle were received with due respect by the director of the French Museum. The exhibition was inaugurated with great pomp and splendor, a few days at the legendary Hotel Le Bristol in the prestigious 8th arrondissement , near the Elysee Palace, and then back to Florida. How happy the couple were to give the general public the opportunity to view their masterpiece for five whole months!

Even in their worst nightmares, the couple never foresaw what would happen to them after borrowing the painting. Little did Ruby and Bruce imagine that among the first visitors would be Jean-Jacques Bauer, the grandson of Simon Bauer, who had bought the painting fifty years before them. Jean-Jacques Bauer, a resident of Passy, ​​the posh district where the museum is located, didn't have to go far to visit the exhibition and verify that the painting was indeed the one that had been looted from his grandfather.

The peaceful fields, the soft pink evening light, the play of yellow and green, the shades of green from intense to delicate, the blue aprons of the women, poetically curving around their bodies, the furrows of shadow on the right side, the relationships between the various figures' poses, the trees on the horizon, the harmony of the entire composition... Pissarro is innocent and kind and his love for the countryside and the villagers, his appreciation for their labor.

Jean-Jacques Bauer was 16 years old when his grandfather died, leaving a will: a list of the paintings that had been stolen from him. Jean-Jacques remembers the 93 paintings that hung on the walls, from floor to ceiling.

For fifty years, Jean-Jacques has devoted time and resources to searching for the lost collection, leafing through catalogs, surfing the Internet tirelessly, going to exhibitions, interviewing art dealers, and recruiting police investigators. Jean-Jacques has already found 62 works from the collection in detective missions that could be written into a novel and filmed. 29 works are still missing.

The authoritative and determined Jean-Jacques, “We are not here to cry,” a French Jew from the 16th arrondissement of Paris , director of an investment company, in a stylish pinstripe suit, accompanied by his wife and daughters, versus Bruce, a real estate developer and investor, and Ruby Toll, an interior designer, American millionaires from Florida, philanthropists in the fields of art and Judaism.

A three-year legal battle, Bauer v. Toll, ended in a historic ruling

Together with the other heirs of Simon Bauer, about twenty people, Jean-Jacques initiated legal proceedings and obtained the confiscation of the painting until the final ruling. Thus, the painting was preserved, as is customary, for the three years of legal proceedings in a safe in the Musée d'Orsay.

It is likely that if the Toll couple had not agreed to lend the painting, they would not have been forced to part with it for good. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that the way the affair unfolded could dissuade other collectors from lending their paintings to temporary exhibitions.

The Tolls claim that the purchase was legal and that the painting, to which they are very attached, is their property. Their lawyer, Ron Sofer, stated that the couple are neither historians nor art experts. They knew nothing about the story of the painting, and there was nothing written about it in the Christie's catalog. You don't correct the injustices of history by creating another injustice, Ron Sofer continued.

But the French Court of Appeal did not accept the Toll couple's arguments and upheld the previous ruling from October 2018, which confirmed the previous ruling from November 2017. France's highest legal institution ruled in a historic decision in July 2020 that the painting would be returned to Simon Bauer's heirs.

The purchase, even in good faith, of a painting that is on the list of works looted from their owners during the occupation has no validity, the court ruled, according to a ruling from April 21, 1945. Bauer's lawyer, Cedric Fischer (whose grandfather had already defended the family's interests), relied on this ruling, and his argument was accepted.

The Tolls should now sue Christie’s, the court advised. Their lawyer, Ron Sofer, however, stated that he would go to the European Court of Human Rights and sue France . The state, he argued, should compensate his clients for the damage they suffered due to the loss of the painting, which was estimated to be worth $1.75 million.

This is the insurance amount paid for the transfer of the painting from Florida to the exhibition in Paris, this is the value of the work, and this is the amount that the Tolls are demanding. Bruce and Ruby Toll, the lawyer said, have nothing against the restitution of the painting to Simon Bauer's heirs, but they should not have to pay for the crimes of the Vichy regime.

The good Camus Pissarro would surely have turned over in his grave if he had been able to follow the theft of the painting from Simon Bauer against the backdrop of the horrors of the time. And who knows, maybe, in the end, he would have breathed a sigh of relief when he was informed of the ruling of the Supreme Court in Paris.

Although the Toll couple still have a few legal avenues to pursue, guided by their lawyer, it is likely that the painting will not be stolen from Simon Bauer's descendants again. After 77 years of wandering, the painting "Piping Peas" was returned to them thanks to the determination of grandson Jean-Jacques.

Link to article about the legal battle between Bauer and Toll

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