Court orders painting's return

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - A painting held by a German baroness rightfully belongs to the estate of a late Jewish art dealer who was forced by Nazi authorities to auction it off, a federal judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge Mary Lisi ordered Maria-Luise Bissonnette on Thursday to turn over

Girl From the Sabiner Mountains

to representatives of the estate of Max Stern, who died in 1987.

"It is clear that Dr. Stern's relinquishment of his property was anything but voluntary," Lisi wrote.

Although outside experts have not authenticated the painting, both sides say it is a work of Franz Xaver Winterhalter, a 19th-century artist famous for his portraits of European nobility. One appraiser for Bissonnette estimated the painting, which is now in a German warehouse, was worth up to $94,000.

Marta Garrett, a lawyer for Bissonnette, would not comment on the ruling, and Bissonnette said yesterday that she did not know whether she would appeal.

She had said earlier this year that she still had the receipt proving her family had paid for the painting.

Stern inherited his family's Dusseldorf art gallery in 1934. Three years later, Nazi authorities forced him to auction off its contents because he was a Jew. He fled Germany after the auction and eventually settled in Canada, where he became a prominent art dealer.

Stern did not keep the proceeds from the auction, according to lawyers for his estate. To secure exit papers for his mother, who was still in Germany, he had to pay arbitrarily imposed taxes.

"I was blackmailed," Stern wrote in an affidavit. The taxes "were totally unjustified and came out of thin air."

Bissonnette's stepfather, Karl Wilharm, a Nazi Party member, purchased the painting at the auction. Bissonnette eventually resettled in Rhode Island and inherited the painting from her parents.

Stern left his estate to McGill and Concordia Universities in Montreal and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The schools have continued Stern's work in trying to find his paintings, about 400 of which remain missing.

Stern's estate found the Winterhalter painting after Bissonnette attempted to auction it in 2005. They first tried to negotiate the return of the work, but when talks broke down, lawyers for the estate filed a suit to get it back.