Treasured Pissarro Print Turns Into Costly Headache

Sharyl Davis thought she was in luck 25 years ago when she bought a charming market scene by the Impressionist Camille Pissarro from a San Antonio art gallery for $8,500. But since 2003, when she took the print to Sotheby’s to sell, her luck has been running the other way.

As it turns out, 30 years ago the French police reported the work stolen from a museum in Aix-les-Bains. After Ms. Davis tried to sell the print, the United States government seized it as contraband.

Last year a French museum guard with an ostensibly remarkable memory said she recognized the man who consigned the work to the Texas gallery as the thief who had passed by her in 1981 on the day the print was stolen. And then last week a federal appeals court rejected Ms. Davis’s claim that, because she was an innocent owner, she should not have to forfeit the print.

Unlike in the Judgment of Solomon, Judge Gerard E. Lynch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit wrote, “neither party has blinked, and we are therefore in the unenviable position of determining who gets the artwork, and who will be left with nothing despite a plausible claim of being unfairly required to bear the loss.”...