Daughter of former owner of a painting stolen by Nazis is suing the University of Oklahoma in hopes of getting it back Painting was stolen from Meyer family during the 1940s when the Nazi's occupied France An attempt to retrieve the painting in the 1950s failed It has since been owned by another collector who did not know about its troubled past The University of Oklahoma does not want to give the painting back to the family Nazis seized artwork: The painting is Shepherdess Bringing In Sheep, an 1886 work by French impressionist artist Camille Pissarro. It was stolen from Raoul Meyer, a Jewish businessman in Paris, during the Nazi occupation of France A French woman is suing Oklahoma University in the hope of recovering painting stolen by Nazis. Her father used to own the painting until it was taken in the 1940s. The painting, Shepherdess Bringing In Sheep,is an 1886 work by French impressionist artist Camille Pissarro. The piece currently hangs in the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. It was stolen from Raoul Meyer, a Jewish businessman in Paris, during the Nazi occupation of France. Now, Meyer's daughter, Leone Meyer, is suing OU in hopes of recovering the painting. The university has so far refused to return the work, citing a previous court ruling in Switzerland that denied the family's claim based on its timing. The fact that the Nazis stole the painting is not in dispute. In the 1940s, after Paris fell under Nazi control, German troops began looting thousands of artworks from museums, galleries and personal collections across France. Before the German invasion of France, the Meyer family was part owner of Groupe Galeries Lafayette, an upscale French department store. Raoul Meyer amassed a large collection of French impressionist paintings. Raoul Meyer's art collection was seized during the Nazi occupation. After the war, Meyer, who survived the occupation, spent years trying to track down the artwork that had been stolen. Meanwhile, Shepherdess Bringing In Sheep changed hands several times. Captured: The painting was seized during the Nazi occupation of France in the 1940s. Now, the daughter of the former owner is suing to get the painting back into her family On display: The piece currently hangs in the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University Of Oklahoma It's also not the first time the family have tried to recover the piece. n 1953, Meyer sued Christoph Bernoulli, a Swiss art dealer who had bought the painting, to tried to acquire it. A Swiss judge dismissed the suit, saying Meyer filed his complaint after a five-year window for such lawsuits had passed. The painting soon made its way to an art gallery in New York. Norman oilman Aaron Weitzenhoffer and his wife, Clara, bought the painting from the gallery in 1956. It was part of an extensive collection of impressionist art the couple amassed over decades. When Clara Weitzenhoffer died in 2000, 33 pieces of art were left to the OU museum. At the time, university officials said the collection, which included Shepherdess Bringing In Sheep, was one of the most important collections of French impressionist paintings given to an American public university. Unsure: Dawn St. Claire, Oklahoma City University Art Historian is unsure of the legal implications of the case given that a previous attempt to obtain the painting in the 1950s failed Max Weitzenhoffer, the son of Aaron and Clara Weitzenhoffer, said his parents never knew about the painting's connections to Nazi art theft, but encouragingly said he didn't know of any provision in his mother's will preventing the university from returning the painting to the Meyer family. OU officials have questioned whether the university is legally required to return the painting. In fact, the university's is arguing that the dismissal of the family's 1953 lawsuit in Switzerland should bar the family from making the same claim 60 years later. Dawn St. Clare, an art history professor at Oklahoma City University, said cases where museums and other public institutions find out they own artworks that were stolen by the Nazis are relatively common. Ms. St. Clare argues that that the painting offers a difficult set of ethical challenges, especially where a painting's owners bought the work in good faith, as the Weitzenhoffers family had. In those cases, there's no established code of ethics for what a museum should do, especially since details can vary widely from one case to the next. Where do you place blame? I don't know,' she said. 'I really don't know.'