A Matisse painting stolen by the Nazis from a wealthy German Jewish businessman and kept in France for nearly 60 years was returned Thursday to the rightful owner's heirs.

Culture Minister Christine Albanel presented "Le mur rose de l'hopital d'Ajaccio" (The Pink Wall at Ajaccio Hospital), painted by French master Henri Matisse in 1898, to the Israeli medical aid organisation Magen David Adom.

The organisation has been identified as the heir to the collection of Harry Fuld Jr, whose father Harry Fuld, owner of a telephone manufacturing company, purchased the painting in Frankfurt in 1914.

Fuld inherited the collection after his father died in 1932 but left it behind when he fled Germany in 1937.