A court has rejected an American couple’s bid to repossess a painting that had been confiscated from them after it was found to have been looted from a Jewish collector during the Second World War.

The painting, by Impressionist master Camille Pissarro, had been purchased more than two decades ago in New York by wealthy art collectors Bruce and Robbi Toll at Christie’s auction house.

But it was on a list of thousands of Jewish-owned works of art that had been looted by the Nazis.

The Tolls — who paid $800,000 for the painting, La Cueillette (“Picking Peas”, right), in 1995 — said they had no idea it was one of 93 works seized from businessman Simon Bauer by the Vichy regime in 1943.

The couple loaned it to a Paris museum for an exhibition last year when it was spotted by one of Bauer’s relatives, who filed a lawsuit to have it returned.

The canvas has since been locked away at the Musée d’Orsay and Orangerie museums in Paris.

A civil court ruled last November that the couple, who are Jewish, had not acted in bad faith by buying the painting but that it should be returned to the Bauer estate.

“It is not Mr Toll, who bought this painting at public auction in  1995, who should pay for the crimes of Vichy,” their lawyer, Ron Soffer, said at the time.

But the civil court did not award the couple any financial compensation and its November ruling was upheld in a Paris appeal court on Tuesday.

The ruling paves the way for the Bauer family to recover the artwork.

Their lawyer, Cedric Fischer, urged the Tolls in an interview with the Associated Press to “respect the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal and not to keep going with the procedures which only aggravate the harm they have suffered.”

He added that the ruling “gives victims of the savagery committed by the Vichy government the right to recover their looted possessions, without a time limit.” 

Bauer narrowly avoided being sent to a concentration camp after his train was cancelled because of a drivers’ strike. He died in 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War.

His family received €109,304 ($127,000) in compensation from a commission which awards compensation to victims of Nazi looting, but have committed to paying the sum back once the painting is returned.

The artwork is now thought to be worth about $1.75 million, the sum paid by the Tolls for its insurance, Mr Fischer said.

In 2011, more than 1,200 stolen works were found in a collection in a rubbish-strewn flat belonging to Cornelius Gurlitt, whose father was one of four art dealers who worked with the Nazis. Many were sold at auction after being returned to the heirs of their original Jewish owners.