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Staubin Staubin

From Looted to Restituted: Journey of a Drawing from Paris to Chicago

Stories of the Collection

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It is not usually the case that an artist has to hide while attempting to draw a portrait.

Yet, those were the lengths to which the 18th-century French artist Gabriel Jacques de Saint-Aubin had to go in order to capture the likeness of his subject, the Bishop of Chartres. To carry out this elaborate scheme, a fellow aristocratic co-conspirator hosted a dinner and arranged the dining room so that the artist could have an unobstructed view of his target. On the left side of the drawing, we can see Saint-Aubin perching on a footstool while hidden by a large screen, furtively attempting to complete the portrait while balancing a large easel on a dining chair.


Gabriel Jacques de Saint-Aubin

Gabriel Jacques de Saint-Aubin was an original and prolific artist who created thousands of drawings over his lifetime—three dozen of which are now owned by the Art Institute. The museum acquired this intriguing and humorous example from the London dealership P&D Colnaghi and Company in 1981. In their richly illustrated catalogue, the drawing appears complete with a storied collecting history that included a number of Saint-Aubin admirers such as Monsieur de Montmerqué, H. Destailleur, and the Marquis de Biron. Such a list of previous owners is known as an object’s provenance. When this catalogue was created in 1981, provenance was primarily viewed as a means of confirming authenticity or conferring prestige and financial value onto an object through a historic association with a famous individual or a high-profile collector.

In contrast to a dealer’s promotional material, scholarly publications seek to provide a more comprehensive overview of an object’s history. In 1931, the art historian Émile Dacier compiled a Saint-Aubin catalogue raisonné (a complete record of an artist’s body of work), where he intriguingly attributes the drawing to the Maurice de Rothschild collection.

Maurice De Rothschild Propritaire De Doniazade Pouliche De Course Vainqueur Du Prix De Diane Le 5 Juin 1921 Chantilly Photographie De Presse Agence Rol

Maurice de Rothschild at Chantilly, 1921


Press photograph of the Rol Agency. Courtesy of Wikimedia

Rothschild, a descendant of the wealthy European Jewish family, used his wealth to build a prestigious and varied art collection. Although no date is provided in the catalogue raisonné, we can assume that he owned the drawing by the time of its publication in 1931. The name Rothschild on an artwork’s provenance statement from pre–World War II France, however, instantly raised questions for me: immediately following the Nazi occupation in June 1940, a ruthless art looting mechanism locked into place. This was no mere side effect of the Nazi invasion, but rather a continuation of the systematic persecution and dispossession of Jewish communities that Germany had been perfecting since 1933.

Bundesarchiv Bild 146 1994 036 09a Paris Parade Auf Der Champs Elyse

German soldiers march down the Champs Elysée during the occupation of Paris, 1940


Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), Bild 146-1994-036-09A. Courtesy of Wikimedia

During the early days of the occupation, the most prominent French Jewish collectors and dealers in Paris were immediately identified and targeted. This included the Rothschilds, who were known for both the quality and quantity of their collections. As one of Europe’s preeminent multinational banking dynasties, they occupied a special place in the Nazis’ imagined “Jewish world conspiracy” and had long been the targets of anti-Semitic attacks. To escape the wrath of the Nazi regime, the family had to flee France, ultimately leaving many of their possessions vulnerable in the face of the Nazi advance.

Such “abandoned” objects were then seized and inventoried. Those objects first appropriated from the Rothschilds, including from Maurice, were taken to the German embassy for “safekeeping.” They were labeled “Botschaft Rothschild” (Embassy Rothschild) with the code “BoR” and an accompanying number stamped, written, or stickered on each object.

Bundesarchiv Bild 183 L15196 Paris Besuch Gerd V  Rundstedt Im Louvre

Nazi Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt and Louvre curator Fernand Merlin in front of the Venus de Milo, October 7, 1940


Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), Bild 183-L15196. Courtesy of Wikimedia

Today, many of these annotations remain on the objects, often functioning as the first warning sign for researchers of a troubling Nazi-era provenance. The associated numbers can then be cross-referenced with index cards created by art experts who worked in service of the Nazi regime. These markings, however, are only as permanent as the surface onto which they are placed: the frame for Saint Aubin’s drawing, the likely spot for its BoR number, had been changed, so to shed light onto what happened to this drawing, I needed to review each index card associated with seized objects created by any artist named Saint-Aubin (in order to account for any cataloguing errors or mistakes)—a lengthy task. 

It is through this process that I learned the Saint-Aubin was object BoR 177. After its stint in the German embassy, it had been moved into the then-empty Louvre, whose collection had been evacuated in advance of the invasion, and then later to the Jeu de Paume museum, where the Nazis’ specialized looting task force known as the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) had set up their cataloguing operation.

Jeu De Paume Err 1940

 The “salle des martyrs,” or room of martyrs, at the Museum of the Jeu de Paume in Paris, about 1940


Paintings stolen by the Nazi task forces of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg

Archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères (Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Courtesy of Wikimedia

As the Nazi forces retreated in anticipation of the Allied advance into Paris, those objects still stored in the Jeu de Paume were moved into the German Reich. In October 1944, the Saint-Aubin drawing was hidden deep in the salt mines in Altaussee, Austria, alongside other “high-quality” objects intended for a future museum dedicated to Hitler. The cache at Altaussee was ultimately captured in 1945 by the Allies.

Eisenhower Bradley And Patton Inspect Looted Art Hd Sn 99 02758

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, accompanied by Gen. Omar N. Bradley, and Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., inspecting stolen art treasures hidden in a salt mine in Germany, 1945


National Archives and Records Administration, NAID 531272. Courtesy of Wikimedia

After the war, the massive task of restitution was made possible in large part due to the availability of captured German records, many of which meticulously inventoried the pre-war provenance of seized objects. Recovered objects were first to be transferred to specific storage depots within Germany, where they were inventoried and sorted into groups intended for repatriation to the country of origin. At this point, the individual countries themselves took on the responsibility of returning objects to their original owners––another challenging task that was often unsuccessful.

As a result of the Allies’ provenance research and restitution effort, in addition to the advocacy of its prewar owner, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin Executing the Portrait of the Bishop of Chartres returned to France and in 1946 was reunited with Maurice de Rothschild, who had weathered the war in Toronto. It’s likely that the drawing descended through the family before it was sold through P&D Colnaghi, the dealership so closely associated with the Rothschilds. Although gaps in this drawing’s provenance remain—not uncommon for objects of this age and type—this new research has accounted for its fate during the dark period between 1940 and 1945. We can now appreciate its journey: from Maurice’s collection to its theft by the Nazis, to its rescue and post-war restitution by the Allies, and finally, to its current home in Chicago. In the spirit of this 18th-century artist, who went to great lengths to capture the image of a face, provenance research seeks to document stories of art, no matter how elusive, and facilitate the rediscovery of memory.

—Meadhbh Ginnane, senior research associate, Provenance Research

Learn more about how provenance research unfolds at the Art Institute.

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