A mysterious small oil on canvas has found residence at the world Centre for peace, liberties and human rights in Verdun, in the Meuse river. The presence in such a place of this piece of bucolic, which represents a woman squatting at the edge of a river, is surprising. It is necessary to delve into the very fate of the table, as tragic as that of the city that now hosts, to understand. The canvas has been robbed by a soldier of the Luftwaffe during the Second world War. Carefully hung on a white wall in what was once an episcopal palace, the table account to take advantage of his new fame to find the owner, tell our colleagues of Figaro.
The work has been delivered by 2019 at the embassy of France in Berlin by Peter Forner, the son of the famous soldier. A tribute was made to this man, now deceased, on the occasion of the awarding of the table in the reception rooms of the embassy. He ” took the initiative, in the twilight of his life, to make this gesture, that he had had the humility to present as natural, but that wasn’t “, was so moved by the minister-counsellor Guillaume Ollagnier. Employee of the airport Tegel, built by France, the descendant of the soldier had set only one condition to his gesture : that the work does not leave a salon bourgeois for being in a vulgar warehouse. Peter Forner has been granted.
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We seek to rectify an injustice !
the Point of the history of big money in this transfer, since the work attributed to Nicolas Rousseau, a student of the Barbizon school, is estimated at eur 3 000. But the symbolism is strong. “We seek to rectify an injustice ! These objects plundered all have a value extremely high, they have a whole bunch of things to tell us, ” confirms in the columns of the Figaro Julien Acquatella, responsible for the antenna-the berlin of the commission for the compensation of victims of spoliation. In 2018, the former Prime minister Edward Philip was called on to “do better” for the restitution of cultural property looted in the Occupation.
In the case of the painting of the Barbizon school, the worst was yet to come. “It is a work of investigation of the meticulous and difficult” waiting to Julien Acquatella and his team. These last few are going to attempt to ” recreate the route of the soldier Forner, of which it is known that the battalion stayed at the castle Fermaincourt and between the Normandy and Saint-Omer […] The archives are also looking for in the genealogy of the painter to try to know who would have been able to inherit this work and pass it on. “
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Philippe Hansch, director of the world Centre for peace, liberties and human rights, believes that he can bring his little stone to the building. “A clue buried in the depths of the memory of a visitor could help us to solve the riddle of the right “,-he hoped.
