Dame Elizabeth Taylor celebrated her 75th birthday in February

An appeal was made by descendants of a Jewish woman who said she was forced to sell it before fleeing Germany in 1939.

Judges refused to review a US appeals court ruling that dismissed the case because it was deemed too late to bring further action.

The actress bought the painting, worth $10-15m (�5-8m), in 1963.

The View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy had previously been owned by the late Margarete Mauthner, a Jewish woman whose possessions were seized by the Nazis after she fled Germany in 1939.

Late discovery

Her descendents said they did not discover they had a possible claim to the painting until 2001.

Family members sued Dame Elizabeth in 2004, saying she failed to review the ownership history and that the 1963 auction brochure said it was likely to have been looted by the Nazis.

Taylor's lawyers said the record showed the painting was sold through two Jewish art dealers to a Jewish art collector, with no proof the Nazis forced Ms Mauthner to give up the 1889 painting.

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