Landscape with Smokestacks - The Case of the Allegedly Plundered Degas

The dispute over one work of art, Degas's Landscape with Smokestacks, was featured in headlines and on television. But because the suit was settled before trial, the story behind the headlines has not been publicly presented. Howard J. Trienens, a lawyer for the defendant collector, traces the landscape's travels from its pre-WWII home to its current location in the Art Institute of Chicago, laying out the mystery surrounding the work and demonstrating the legal complexities that surround Holocaust restitution cases, yet are seldom examined in depth by the media.

"Howard Trienen's Landscape with Smokestacks is a lucid, engaging book that offers an unusual vantage on the world of art collecting and the heritage of the Holocaust. Most notably, it demonstrates why the muddy, boring, detailed truth of the law, that emerges from adversarial skirmishing, can prove more reliable than that of journalism, where the independent observers are sometimes too eager to capitulate to preestablished verities." --Scott Turow

"Trienens not only exposes the weakness of the lawsuit, he decries simplistic media coverage and cautions against making tacit assumptions." --Booklist