The Reaper with a Sickle Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

 

The Reaper with a Sickle

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796–1875)

1838

Curt Valentin in provenances at the Harvard Art Museums

- The Persistent Crime of Nazi-Looted Art, by Sophie Gilbert, in The AtlanticLooted Art

The director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr Jr. used art dealer Curt Valentin as an intermediary to secretly purchase artworks confiscated by Nazis from German museums. What else did Barr and other American museums directors purchase through Valentin?

In this next series of posts, we will look at the provenances of artworks that mention Curt Valentin. 

An interesting exercise for young art historians and provenances researchers is to examine each provenance with the questions: 

1) Who owned this artwork before Curt Valentin? 

2) Are there provenance gaps for the years 1933-1945?

3) What share of artworks that mention Curt Valentin in the provenance lack information about sellers, dates and places for the Nazi years? (0-25%; 26-50%; 51%-75%; 76%-100%).

4) What possible explanations might there be for the observations in 3)?

5) What actions does this suggest?

1. Mentions of Curt Valentin in the provenances of artworks at the Harvard Art Museums

See  Valentin Harvard Art Museums Provenance



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for more information on Curt Valentin's role in bringing European art into American museums, see:

MoMA’s Problematic Provenances by William D. Cohan published November 17, 2011 by Artnews

Provenance Research: Paul Cailleux in NEPIP

Portrait of a Woman with a Corsage of Blue Flowers - a provenance gap?

Paul Cailleux also known as Paul de Cayeux and the Marquis de Cayeux, was the president of the French art dealers association. In 1946 his name appears on the Art Looting Investigation Unit's Red Flag list of names with the following mention:

Cailleux, Paul. Paris, 136 rue du Fbg St Honore. Dealer in contact with Rochlitz, Wuester, Frau Dietrich, Haberstock. Knew Lohse, who claims to have freed his wife from a concentration camp. Authority on 18th century French art. President of the Art Dealers Association, Paris. 

The name "Cailleux"  appears in the ownership history of numerous artworks, some of which have gaps or uncertainties in the provenance between 1933-1945.

Here are a few examples from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (not currently on view).