Maria-Louise Bissonnette, of Providence, must relinquish this painting — which was ordered sold by the Nazis.

AP / Concordia University

An elderly German baroness living in Providence must relinquish a painting sold under duress by a Jewish art dealer in Nazi Germany 70 years ago, a federal judge ruled this week.

U.S. District Judge Mary M. Lisi ordered Maria-Louise Bissonnette, 84, to return Girl from the Sabiner Mountains to the estate of Max Stern, a well-known collector and dealer who died in 1987 after a lengthy postwar career in Canada.

The oil painting is the work of Franz Xaver Winterhalter, a 19th-century German painter and lithographer known for his portraits of royalty.

Thomas R. Kline, a lawyer for the estate, said the decision provided a measure of vindication for Stern, who resisted Nazi efforts to sell off his art collection for nearly two years before fleeing Germany.

“It vindicates his actions in standing up to the Nazis, trying to hold on to his business, his collections … and making efforts after the war to recover his collection,” Kline said.

Bissonnette, who lives in a downtown high-rise, declined an interview request yesterday. And her lawyers did not return calls for comment.

The case is the latest in a string of emotionally charged attempts by individuals, institutions and governments to wrest back stolen, forcibly sold or smuggled artwork.

Last year, the Connecticut heirs of prominent Jewish Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker recovered 202 paintings seized by the Nazis after the invasion of Amsterdam.

And the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York made headlines last year when they agreed to return dozens of disputed antiquities to Italy.

The Stern case dates to 1934, when the dealer inherited a Dusseldorf art gallery from his father.

At the time, the Nazis were enacting and beginning to enforce strict laws that prohibited Jews from owning businesses.

And in 1935, the regime’s Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts ordered Stern to sell his collection.

Two years later, after Stern’s appeals failed, the Lempertz auction house in Cologne, Germany, sold his works below market value.

Stern joined his sister in London just before World War II broke out, and later moved to Canada, where he would head the Dominion Gallery in Montreal for years.

Stern made efforts through the Canadian and British governments to recover his lost paintings. And in 1964, he won partial damages from a restitution court in Germany.

When he died, he left his estate to Concordia and McGill universities in Montreal and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Israel.

Girl from the Sabiner Mountains surfaced in January 2005 when Bissonnette attempted to auction it through Cranston-based Estates Unlimited.

Bissonnette’s stepfather Karl Wilharm, a physician and high-ranking member of the Nazi party, according to the Stern estate, had purchased the painting in the forced auction of 1937.

And Bissonnette inherited the painting from her mother’s estate in 1991, according to court documents.

When she attempted to sell it, the Stern estate made a claim for restitution with the Holocaust Claims Processing Office, a wing of the State of New York’s banking department.

The office sent a demand letter in February 2005 seeking return of the painting. Bissonnette refused, kicking off a year of fruitless negotiations over a painting that has been valued at $67,000 to $93,000.

Bissonnette ultimately shipped the painting to Germany and sued the Stern estate in the German courts in a bid to establish ownership.

The Stern estate subsequently filed a suit of its own in Rhode Island, paving the way for this week’s decision.

Kline, the lawyer for the estate, said the American court ruling will prevail since it was issued prior to any German ruling.

The decision was significant, he added, because it equated a forced sale with theft — buttressing future claims by any victims of Nazi rule pushed to auction off their wares.

“So much of the stealing was done through coercion and duress, as opposed to the classic gun to the head,” he said.

Kline said the painting, which is in need of restoration, may ultimately join a traveling Stern exhibition.

dscharfe@projo.com