Austrian Museum Pays $19m for Painting Looted by Nazis

By JTA July 21, 2010

A museum in Austria will pay $19 million to keep a painting looted during the Holocaust.

The Leopold Museum in Austria settled a decade-long legal battle by agreeing to pay the estate of an Austrian Jewish woman, Bondi Jaray, for the painting that a Nazi reportedly stole from her in 1939. Jaray died in 1969, insisting that the painting belonged to her.

U.S. officials seized the painting, “Portrait of Wally” by Egon Schiele, in 1999, two years after it arrived as a loan to New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

The painting reportedly was stolen and later returned to the Austrian government after World War II.

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