AP News, October 19th, 2007
A judge dismissed a challenge to the Norton Simon Museum of Art's ownership of two prized 16th century paintings that had been seized by the Nazis.
Federal Judge John F. Walker did not give reasons for his decision Thursday, four days before a scheduled hearing on dueling lawsuits filed by the museum foundation and Marei von Saher of Greenwich, Conn., who had claimed she was the art's rightful owner.
The wood panels depict life-size Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and were painted by famed German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. They have hung in the museum in Pasadena since 1976. Museum founder Norton Simon bought them for $800,000 from an heir to the Russian aristocrats the museum claimed were the original owners.
Norton Simon attorney Luis Li declined to comment on the ruling. Von Saher's attorney Lawrence M. Kaye said Friday he had no comment.
Von Saher's father-in-law bought the paintings at an auction in 1931 in Berlin. His gallery in Amsterdam was seized by Nazis in 1940, but the gallery owner's family was able to reclaim most of his collection after World War II.
The Cranach paintings, however, were transferred to an heir of Russia's aristocratic Stroganoff family, who sold them to Simon.
The Stroganoff family was thought to have lost the paintings when Bolsheviks seized them during the Russian Revolution, according to the museum's version of their history. The art sold at the 1931 auction raised money for the Soviet government and was billed as being from the Stroganoff collection of Leningrad.
But von Saher's lawsuit claimed the Cranach paintings were merely lumped with the Stroganoff collection for the auction and they actually came from a Ukrainian church.
