Court permits Liz Taylor to keep Van Gogh painting

The family of a Jewish survivor of Nazi Germany who claim actress Elizabeth Taylor owns a van Gogh painting looted from them lost their court battle over it today.

The US Supreme Court refused to rule on the case of 'View of the Asylum', which is thought to be worth millions of dollars.

The work may be among the estimated 600,000 works of art that belonged to Jews and wound up in Nazi hands between 1933 and 1945.

Margarete Mauthner, its former owner, left Germany in March 1939, having lost her livelihood and most of her property to the Nazis. Her relatives say the painting was among the loot.

In 1963 while living in London, Taylor bought it for about $236,000 (€163,737) at a Sotheby's auction from the estate of a German art collector.

Her lawyers say the record shows that the painting was sold through two Jewish art dealers to a Jewish art collector, with no evidence of any Nazi link in the transactions.

The family members say they did not discover they had a possible claim to the painting until 2001.

Mauthner's heirs to legal action to recover it, but a court in San Francisco ruled they did not have a private right to sue.

They also are tried to recover the painting under California state law, but the appeals court ruled they waited too long to act.