Pauline Baer de Perignon - The Vanished Collection

www.newvesselpress.com

First published in French as La collection disparue

Copyright ditions Stock, 2020

Translation copyright 2022 Natasha Lehrer

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baer de Perignon, Pauline

[La collection disparue, English]

The Vanished Collection/Pauline Baer de Perignon; translation by Natasha Lehrer.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-939931-98-6

Library of Congress Control Number 2021939539

FranceNonfiction

Praise for

THE VANISHED COLLECTION

Pauline Baer de Perignon is a natural storytellerrefreshingly honest, curious and open. Like the best memoirists, she manages to tell multiple stories simultaneously, to delicately layer meanings and narratives. Here is not only a riveting art world mystery, but an utterly personal, heartfelt, and extremely intelligent story of a woman doing everything she can to uncover the truths of her family.

MENACHEM KAISER,

author of Plunder: A Memoir of Family

Property and Nazi Treasure

A charmingly told account of a womans quest to reconstruct her great-grandfathers art collection that leads her not only to the restitution of looted works, but also to a profound and touching recognition of her familys wartime odyssey and her own place in their myriad generations.

LYNN H. NICHOLAS,

author of The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europes

Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War

Beautifully evokes a vanished world that once stood at the crossroads between the heights of civilization and the depths of barbarism before being overwhelmed by the latter. The restitution to Pauline Baer de Perignons family of one of Frances finest 18th-century masterpieces, through a harrowing process dramatically recounted in this book, goes some way to redeem the cause of civilization.

JAMES GARDNER,

author of The Louvre: The Many Lives of the

Worlds Most Famous Museum

Every family has its paradise lost, writes Pauline Baer de Perignon. Like the Camondos, the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis and other Jewish families whose art was looted in the war, her heritage is of epic proportions and this account of that past resurfacing today is as moving as it is fascinating. I could not put it down.

CCILE DAVID-WEILL,

author of Parents Under the Influence and The Suitors

As devourable as a thriller... Incredibly moving.

ELLE

A terrific book.

LE POINT

Stimulated by a desire to write, Pauline unconsciously understands that what she really wants is to bear witness. As if in a Kubrick film, she opens a door and a river of blood pours out on her. With valued assistance from Modiano, Pauline digs into this shocking story that amazes and breaks the heart... transforming an unfortunately commonplace account of paintings stolen by the Nazis into a breathtaking novel of suspense.

LE FIGARO

In memory of my father, Philippe Baer For my children, lie, Rose, and Colombe For Henri

TABLE OF CONTENTS

When it comes to art, only one thing counts: the pursuit of truth.

Errare humanum est!

But I plead good faith.

Jules Strauss, January 1931

I

TREASURES OF THE PAST

If I close my eyes, I see walls hung with paintings. Portraits of lords and ladies of the eighteenth-century court rub shoulders with Degass dancers, Monets glowing landscapes, Sisleys snow-covered gardens.

Theres a man standing there. Hes been waiting for me a long time.

His eyes are smiling behind his small round spectacles. His face looks familiar, though Ive never met him before. He has the same narrow moustache as my father, and wears white spats over his shoes.

He welcomes me into his study, where he talks me through each painting, describing the grace of a ballerina doing up the ribbon of her slipper, or the celestial beauty of an umbrella pine silhouetted against a blue sky. His voice fills with excitement as he tells the story of each picture, who painted it, where he came across it, what made him choose it.

I listen with such awe that he invites me to follow him, and escorts me to his apartment, through a vast gallery filled with pieces of art, bronze sculptures, and terracotta figures. Its dizzying, I cant take it all in. All of a sudden he turns, snatches up the fedora perched on the terracotta head of a comely young girl, and takes my arm. His wife calls out to him from afar, but he doesnt reply.

We step over three cairn terriers that the housekeeper has taken out for a walk and, laughing, run down the five flights of stairs of this beautiful Haussmann building on Avenue Foch.

Outside the chauffeur is waiting for him at the wheel of a sedan. Jules smiles at him but doesnt stop. The eagle carved into the stone faade of the building eyes us as we walk away down the side alley.

Jules lights a cigarette with the tip of the one hes just smoked. Its spring, the birds are singing, the sun is shining, and galleries await. Jacques Seligmann, Paul Rosenberg, the brothers Bernheim: Jules is warmly welcomed by his friends, his colleagues, dealersall, like him, pioneers and lovers of impressionist art.

He looks like hes simply idling, but nothing escapes him.

He takes my hand and places it on a painting. Delicately, with the tips of his fingers, he shows me how to lightly touch the canvas to appreciate its texture.

Time and again, I conjure up this impossible meeting with my great-grandfather.

On a bookshelf in the drawing room of the apartment where I was born, sat an old, dust-covered book. I never noticed it was there, so of course I had no idea it contained images of the Impressionist paintings that made up my great-grandfathers collection. It had never once occurred to me to open the catalog of the Private Sale, Jules Strauss Collection, 1932.

I could have asked my father to tell me about Jules Strauss, but I never did. My father died when I was twenty, before I was bold enough to ask him about the war, about his parents and grandparents, about his emotions and his memories.

On my aunt Nadinesmy fathers sistersdesk, in the apartment in which she has lived for over sixty years, sits a small black-and-white photograph of an old man, his melancholy expression concealed behind his round spectacles. He has neatly combed gray hair, and a flannel suit that hangs a little loose. How many times has she mentioned her grandfather, while I barely listened, her words like background music scarcely to be heeded?