The Painting Stolen by the Nazis That Set Camille Pissarro's Auction Record

Camille Pissarro's Le Boulevard Montmartre, Matinée De Printemps (1897) sold for $32.1m (£19.68m) at Sotheby's in London on February 5, 2014. The oil on canvas work had been traded 14 times in the past.

When Pissarro wrote to his son, Lucien, in 1897 that he planned to return to Paris to paint a series of the city's grand, new boulevards, his son was enthusiastic, writing: ‘This will make you more successful in the eyes of the Parisians who love only their city." Pissarro's dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, had no trouble selling the canvases.

In fact, Durand-Ruel ignored Pissarro's express wish to hold back this particular painting for a planned show at the Carnegie Institute, now the Carnegie Museum of Art, in Pittsburgh. His dealer sent Pissarro's painting of the Avenue de l’Opéra instead.

Le Boulevard Montmartre was bought by Max Silberberg in 1923, a German-Jewish industrialist who had amassed one of the finest collections of 19th and 20th century art in Germany. His companies were seized by the Nazis and his collection dispersed in forced sales in 1935-36. Silberberg was subsequently murdered in the Holocaust.

The painting, which reached New York and passed through a number of hands before it was donated by American-Jewish collectors John and Frances L. Loeb to the Isreal Museum in [Jerusalem].

Joachim and Lionel Pissarro, great-grandsons of the painter and experts on his art, worked with the Isreal Museum to prove that the painting was among those owned by Silberberg. It was restituted to his heir, Gerta Silberberg, in 2000, who allowed it to remain on loan in Israel until her death in 2013.

The sale beat Pissarro's previous auction record by $17.5m, a 100% rise. His previous record was set by Les Quatre Saisons (l'hiver, Le Printemps, L'eté, L'automne) (1872), which sold for $14.6m at Christie's on November 6, 2007. The group had been traded 11 times in the past.

A Brief History of Pissarro at Auction