Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

The Old Masters were mainly bought by the elder Baron, while Hans focused more on the 19th and 20th century, resulting in a collection that spans eight centuries of European painting, without claiming to give an all-encompassing view but rather a series of highlights. One of the focal points is the early European painting, with a major collection of trecento and quattrocento (i.e. 14th and 15th century) Italian paintings by Duccio, Luca di Tommè, Bernardo Daddi, Paolo Uccello, Benozzo Gozzoli and his contemporaries, and works of the early Flemish and Dutch painters like Jan van Eyck (Diptich of the Annunciation), Petrus Christus (Madonna of the Dry Tree), Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Gerard David and Hans Memling. Other highlights include works by leading Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo painters, including Antonello da Messina (Portrait of a Man), Francesco del Cossa, Bramantino (Christus Dolens), Fra Bartolomeo, Giulio Romano, Giovanni Bellini, Palma il Vecchio, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Jacopo Bassano, Sebastiano del Piombo (Portrait of Ferry Carondelet), Bernardino Luini, Agnolo Bronzino, Domenico Beccafumi, Albrecht Dürer (Christ among the Doctors), Hans Baldung Grien, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Holbein (Portrait of Henry VIII), Albrecht Altdorfer, El Greco, Caravaggio (Saint Catherine), Guercino, Sebastiano Ricci, Rubens, Van Dyck, Murillo, Rembrandt, Frans Hals (Family Portrait in a Landscape), Simon Vouet, Claude Lorrain, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Tiepolo, Giambattista Pittoni, Watteau, François Boucher, Chardin, Fragonard, Gainsborough and Pompeo Batoni, as well as two famous portraits by Domenico Ghirlandaio (Giovanna Tornabuoni) and Vittore Carpaccio (Knight in a landscape). The Museum houses a display of North American paintings from 18th and 19th centuries, including works by Copley, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent. The display of the European 19th century starts with works by Francisco Goya, Thomas Lawrence, Delacroix, Géricault, Corot and Courbet. There are Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by the artists Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Pierre Bonnard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh. The large collection of twentieth-century modern art includes Cubist works by Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris, as well as paintings by Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, James Ensor, Kandinsky, Salvador Dalí, Paul Klee, Chagall, Magritte, Piet Mondrian, Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning and Francis Bacon. The selection of German Expressionism is extensive, and includes works by Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Max Beckmann, George Grosz, and Otto Dix. A collection of works from the museum (Fra Angelico, Cranach, Titian, Canaletto, Rubens) is housed in Barcelona in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

One painting, Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain by Camille Pissarro, belonged to a Jewish woman, Lilly Cassirer who was compelled by a Nazi official to sell it under duress for an exit visa to escape Nazi Germany shortly after Kristallnacht in 1939. In 1958, a German court awarded Lilly Cassirer Neubauer compensation of DM 120,000, the fair market value for the work. By 2015, her descendants had filed a lawsuit against the museum, on the grounds that it was looted by the Nazis. On 1 May 2019, a California judge determined that the museum held the right to keep the painting. The case was heard by the United States Supreme Court on 18 January 2022. The Supreme Court ruled that California law on choice-of-law should apply to the suit. On remand, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment in favour of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in an action under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Motivated by this verdict, Jesse Gabriel, co-chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, authored Assembly Bill 2867, which aims to help California residents recover art and other personal property stolen during the Holocaust or other acts of genocide or persecution. The bill was passed in August 2024. The United States Supreme Court in March 2025 vacated the Ninth circuit decision and ordered the Ninth Circuit to review the case in light of the new California law. The Ninth Circuit then remanded the case to the trial court to review the effect of Assembly Bill 2867.