Free Rachael's Gift by Alexandra Cameron Page A

Will advise ASAP.
    I began writing emails to my contacts at Christie’s and Sotheby’s to confirm the already-listed provenance, asking them to email me any relevant supporting documents and requesting the contact details of the sellers and buyers. It was a long shot, as these places protected the identities of their clients. I sent another email to the Getty Institute, where Galerie Georges-Petit’s archives were held, to confirm Mr Bernard’s purchase of the painting.
    Another email pinged through with scanned photocopies of Courbet’s catalogue raisonné from the librarian at the National Library in Canberra. I was yet to hear back from Monica about the stamps on the back of the stretcher. I printed off the photocopies. If I were to discover serious new information easily, this was where it would happen.
    The write-up for
La Baigneuse
said the painting was dated 1866. I held up the colour photocopy of the image next to the actual painting, confirming they were one and the same. There was a short description: a woman with red hair lies beneath a canopy of leaves on a blanket in the forest. Her body faces the viewer and her chin turns away to the left, her hair falls across her shoulders and chest, one arm rests on a fallen branch, her left leg is outstretched and her right knee is bent. According to M. Roger Bonniot, the painting depicted the forest at Ornans and the model was a young local girl called Françoise.
    The bibliography stated that André Philippe, a prominent dealer during the war, mentioned the painting in his book,
Memoirs of an Antiques Dealer
. The painting had been displayed at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1889 and also at the Galerie Charpentier in November 1942. Now this was important. It was one of the vital gap years, between 1908 and 1967, for which we had, until now, no records. Furthermore it was the first proof of its existence in Paris during the war. My insides began to hum: the mystery owner would most likely be listed in their archives. I looked up exhibition catalogues for Galerie Charpentier and found them to be stored at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky, which was part of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. I held myself in check – don’t get ahead of yourself. It was too easy to get caught up in the moment and I wasn’t anywhere near the end of the trail yet – it had just begun. I composed an email to an archivist at the museum, explaining the case and requesting a check on their files.
    The workmen across the street began drilling into concrete. With each steel strike, rat-a-tat-tat, my body tensed. I closed the window. The noise was stifled, but the vibrations were still strong.
    Trying to refocus, by sheer chance, I found André Philippe’s book for sale at a second-hand bookstore in the city and managed to buy it over the phone and have them courier it to the office.
    I stared at
La Baigneuse
again, wishing she could speak. I was sure she would have a story or two to tell. The sensuous lines of her hips, the overt sexuality of a woman giving herself to the viewer – to the voyeur; she was so passive, so submissive. Yet the picture seemed to hint at a kind of violence. Courbet had caused a stir in the Paris Salon during his erotic period and was quite the enfant terrible of his period.
    No,
La Baigneuse
was pure sex; it would not have fitted the Nazi ideal of racial purity and classical forms, the basis on which they collected art, Rembrandt being the pinnacle. Artists whose work did not fit the Nazi agenda, such as Picasso and Matisse, were called degenerate. But Courbet was an anomaly: there were Courbets that were taken for Hitler and Goering’s collections, and others that were not.
    When the Jewish people were stripped of their citizenship and their assets deemed property of the state, the ERR swept through their households; they tracked down bank vaults and hiding places in friends’ chateaux in the countryside. Objects of value were either sent to Hitler’s