Landscape With Smokestacks

Against a background of controversy over the possibility that works of art owned by American collectors may have originally been stolen by the Nazis from Jews later killed in the holocaust, the story of one work of art Landscape with Smokestacks by Degas captured the headlines. As told by the media, the story is straightforward. The landscape, owned by Jewish banker in the Netherlands, was sent to Paris in 1939. The Nazis occupied France and stole the Landscape. The Jewish banker and his wife were killed in the Holocaust. Their heirs searched for the landscape but did not locate it until, half a century later, it was found in the possession of an art collector in Chicago. The heirs sued to recover the work.