The history of the French museum curator Rose Valland It was definitely out of the lines, but it has been lost among many others, and now it is definitely time to re -humble it from the past. Valland, who was also conservative to the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris, during the Second World War collaborated with the French Resistance as a solitary espionage agent and made his life jeopardize for the love of art, saving dozens of works of art sacked by the Nazis during the dark times of the occupation.
In those years, Valland he held trace of tens of thousands of works passed through the museum where he worked – used as an operational warehouse by the Nazis – before they were sorted by the regime in Germany and Austria to embellish the villas of Nazis.
After the war he was named officialhe collaborated with the Commission of recovery of works of art, and was awarded numerous honors. Only thanks to her, they were recovered over 60,000 works: in addition to dozens of paintings by Degas, Picasso, Gauguin, Modigliani, Braque, Toulouse-Lautrecas well as thousands of precious objects stolen from private collections and homes.
Rose Valland’s life: studies and arrival at national museums
Rose Antonia Maria Valland was born in a family of humble origins on November 1, 1898 in Saint-Étienne-De-Saint-Geors (town between Grenoble and Lyon). But his parents had no idea that that little girl was destined to change The history of art French in the dark times that a few decades would come to follow.
Rose studied at the master’s institute thanks to a scholarship, then graduated in 1922 at École Nationale des Beaux-Arts of Lyon And he decided to become a teacher of art: after passing the competition, he moved for two years to Paris Where he attended the internship and, while teaching the high school, he graduated in art at theÉcole du louvreand then to Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie.
In the 1931 Rose concluded his studies but, due to a commission vote, he was unable to access the official career in the world of fine arts. The following year he managed to become the following year Curator voluntary assistant at the Jeu de Paume MuseumMuseum of Art and Modern Photography that collects works from all over Europe. The workplace was in Tuileries garden on the corner with Place de la Concordenot far from the Louvre, and at the time Rose could not know that, less than ten years later, just that place would become the sorting center from which the Nazis would have made the works they wanted to appropriate.
In the 1939with the war at the gates, the “promotion” arrived: Jacques Jaujard, deputy director of the national museums of France, appointed Valland retention employee to the Directorate of National Museums.
Nazi looting in France of the 1940s
In the 1940 the Nazis occupied France: one of the actions put in place by the regime was Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (Er) organism created with the ideological objective – declared by the same leaders of the Reich – of study Jewish culture. The creator and coordinator of the project was the politician Alfred Rosenberg – then condemned and executed to Nuremberg – who took care of organizing the collection of material from museums, archives and libraries so that they could be examined.
In August of that year, the head of the German Foreign Ministry Otto von Ribbentrop ordered confiscate the most important art collections owned by Jews who lived in Parisbut not only: two months later, Err – which in the meantime continued its collection and filing – also confiscated other paintings, paper documents, objects of antiquity, furniture, tapestries, valuable furnishing supplies, etc. Soon, Nazi hierarchs e noble affiliated to the regime began to appropriate it to exhibit them in their private homes.
Rose Valland’s intervention to keep track of stolen works of art
To manage the flow of this large amount of material, it was needed A place of transit and storageelected in the Jeu de Paume Museum, where Rose Valland worked in those same years. “Luckily” The Er Erpy and codified all the works that passed through And that they were then sorted between Germany, Austria and Bavaria, and this was precisely the winning card of Rose who, thanks to his knowledge of the German learned thanks to travel made years earlier, he held a copy of all the works in turn who passed from the museum where he was coordinator.
Vallard therefore produced detailed lists of works, owners to whom they had been confiscated and places where they were shipped, and kept constant contacts with the trucks that transported the works on the trains directed to Austria and Germany, so as to inform the French resistance so that did not explode the trains on which the precious were present.
Rose not only kept trace of the German registers, but also rummaged in the garbage to recover notes and notes if necessary, and portrayed with sketches the Nazi officers who passed on to the Jeu de Paume, all in order to retain as much information as possible. He worked like a real spy and always kept informed Jaujard, the director of the national museums, to whom he sent a list of about 170 pages where he held trace of everything.
The intervention made was particularly significant In August 1944 with train number 40044 at the Aubervilliers (Paris) railway station on which the Nazis loaded almost 1,000 stolen paintings, including Works by Degas, Picasso, Gauguin, Modigliani, Braque, Toulouse-Lautrec and many other famous painters. Rose immediately passed the information to Jaujard, who in turn passed to the Resistance, and the operation (not without difficulty) was stopped.
The May 4, 1945a month before the landing in Normandy, Rose was summoned to the headquarters of the first army on the order of General Jean de Latre de Tassigny: He was named first lieutenant, then captain. Rose Valland was now a member of the army, and the Mission of recovery of works of art for which, after the liberation, a special commission was established.
The last years of Rose Valland’s life and what has remained of his work today
Thanks to the silent work of Rose Valland, during the war and its activity as an official in the following years, to date Over 60,000 works of art have been recovered stolen by the Nazis. Valland even took part in the Nuremberg process In 1946, during which he witnessed Hermann Goering to report that he had stolen.
From the second half of the 1940s, the historic was held of assignments and honors: in 1953 he was appointed conservative of the national museums of France and in 1954 president of the Commission for the protection of works of art. In the same year he received the medal for the resistance and the legion of honor from the French government, and medals and honors also from the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States. He died in Ris-Orangis on September 18, 1980, in the tranquility of anonymity, wanted by herself.
Although his story has remained unknown to most for many decades, in recent years more and more about it. If today you know so much about her, it is not so much thanks to her book Le Front de l’Art, (now also translated into English) in which she documented her work, but above all thanks to an association that bears her name, to the database dedicated by the French Ministry of Culture and the Podcast Rose Valland, Heroine de l’Ofia.
Even today, if you notice, on the signs next to some paintings present in the French museums there are the initials MNR (Musées Nationaux Récupéractions): we are talking about about 2,000 works that disappeared during the war, whose legitimate owners have never been identified, since they too have still disappeared.
