SAN FRANCISCO, May 19 (UPI) -- Actress Elizabeth Taylor will be allowed to keep a Van Gogh painting that once belonged to a Jewish owner who sold it before fleeing Nazi Germany.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the descendents of the previous owner had waited too long to seek the painting's return, and that a similar federal law could only be used by governments to recover misappropriated art.
The end result is that the legendary actress can keep the painting that she bought at auction in 1963 for $260,000.
The painting "View of the Asylum and Chapel at St. Remy'' was reputedly sold for a fraction of its value by Margarete Mauthner in1939 when she left Germany for South Africa. The San Francisco Chronicle said Taylor's legal team contended there was no evidence Mauthner had been forced to sell the work, which she had purchased in 1907.
