My grandfather's gallery: a legendary art dealer's escape from Vichy France

Abstract

On 20 September 1940, Paul Rosenberg disembarked in New York, just one of hundreds of tired Jewish refugees fleeing Vichy France. Leaving behind his celebrated Paris gallery, Paul had managed to save his family; his paintings weren't all so fortunate. Some - the Picassos at MoMA's first retrospective - were already safely abroad. But dozens of works by Cezanne, Monet and Sisley were seized by Nazi forces, destined for Swiss galleries and private collections. Drawing on her grandfather's astonishingly intimate correspondence with Picasso, Matisse, Braque and others, Anne Sinclair takes us on a personal journey through the life of a feted member of the Parisian art scene and a friend to the greatest artists of the century. But Paul's flight from his beloved gallery to exile in New York also tells a darker story, emblematic of the millions of Jews, rich and poor, who lost everything in the Second World War.