How a Nazi-Looted Painting Made its Way to University of Oklahoma (Q78010358)
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news article, Newsweek
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | How a Nazi-Looted Painting Made its Way to University of Oklahoma |
news article, Newsweek |
Statements
How a Nazi-Looted Painting Made its Way to University of Oklahoma (English)
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Léone Meyer was born in late 1939, as war was breaking out. Her mother reportedly was a Parisian seamstress. Her father is unknown. She was just a few years old when her family was murdered at Auschwitz. Someone likely put her into hiding, says Pierre Ciric, her attorney, and she wound up in an orphanage near Paris. Somewhat like the plot of Annie, the wealthy Raoul and Yvonne Meyer, who had been in hiding during the war, adopted her in 1946. They also tried to reclaim all their stolen art. By 1952, the Meyers had chased down Shepherdess—it was in Switzerland. They sued its owner, but the court ruled against them because they couldn't prove he had known the work was stolen when he acquired it. The dealer, who had a reputation for handling stolen art, offered to sell it to the Meyers, but they refused to buy something they already owned.Léone Meyer's adoptive parents died in the 1970s, leaving her their sole heir. Then in her 30s, she felt that recovering the painting was a duty to both her murdered family and her adoptive one. But she had no idea where her Shepherdess was. After the Swiss court decision, the painting crossed the Atlantic and made its way to a gallery in New York City. (English)
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Prior to World War II, Shepherdess belonged to Théophile Bader, who co-founded the upscale department store chain Galeries Lafayette. It later went to Bader's daughter Yvonne and her husband, Raoul Meyer. In 1940, around the time Paris fell to the Nazis, the Meyers stashed the painting and the rest of their art collection in a bank vault in southern France. But the Nazis accessed the vault a year later and seized the collection, which also included at least three Renoirs and a Derain. They hauled it back to Paris, where they operated a depot for their cultural plunders in a building near the Louvre Museum called the Jeu de Paume. Scholars have described the site, which once served as Napoleon III's indoor tennis court, as a "concentration camp" for more than 22,000 stolen art objects. (English)