no doubt about it; a humbug, well, yes, a little of that too-but a beast who would fatten on the horrible plight of the Jews under the Nazis? With all my heart I hoped it wasn't so. I turned back to the article.
Mr. Mann claims that the alleged Rembrandt painting now in the possession of the Seattle Art Museum was purchased in this way from his father in 1942 for a price of 20,000 Occupation francs, less than one-hundreth of its actual value. This is in sharp contrast to Mr. Vachey's assertion that he purchased the painting at a Paris antique shop in 1992.
'It was the same thing as stealing it,' Mr. Mann told our reporter bitterly. 'Like Jewish families throughout France, we were desperate and persecuted, our rights gone, our possessions stripped. What choice did we have? If we had not 'sold' the painting to Mr. Vachey, the Nazis would have taken it at will. It broke my father's heart to part with it. My father was not a rich man, not a collector. He was, like me, a government employee. The picture was the only thing of value we owned. It had been left to him in 1936 by an aunt in the Netherlands. It hung in our living room. I grew up with it.'
The painting, according to Mr. Mann, who was a child of seven at the time, is a portrait of an old soldier known to be by the seventeenth-century minor painter Govert Flinck. When asked how it was that Mr. Vachey and the Seattle Art Museum were now ascribing it to Rembrandt van Rijn, he replied: 'You would have to ask them that.'
Mr. Mann says he believes that the painting rightfully belongs to his family, and that he plans to press charges against Mr. Vachey in criminal court and to vigorously pursue the recovery of his property. He says he will gladly refund Mr. Vachey the 20,000 Occupation francs. In today's currency this would amount to 125 francs.
Our investigators have confirmed that it is also true that Mr. Vachey managed the now-defunct Galerie Royale during the German Occupation. Rumors of his dealings with Nazi officials have been heard before, but Les Echos Quotidiens believes that this is the first time specific allegations by an aggrieved party have been made. Whether proof is forthcoming is yet to be seen.
Proof. I raised my head. 'That scrapbook,' I said slowly. 'It would have covered the acquisitions he made during the Occupation. It would have covered this.'
'Maybe, maybe not,' Calvin said. 'You're not going to know until you talk to Vachey.'
'Maybe that's what somebody didn't want me to see.'
Calvin spread his hands. I lifted the paper again.
Mr. Vachey, who was involved some years ago in a spectacular court case stemming from his admitted theft of paintings from the Musee Barillot in Dijon, has refused comment to our reporters. Seattle Art Museum officials in the United States have likewise been unavailable for comment.
Les Echos Quotidiens believes it is in the public interest to continue its investigation into this matter. Mr. Mann's accusations raise serious questions about Mr. Vachey's recent gift to the Louvre of 34 paintings purported to be by various French and Dutch masters from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.
We will remain on the job!
I put down the newspaper, went to the high window, leaned my elbows on the sill and my chin on my forearms, and stared out at the ancient, narrow towers of Saint-Benigne, drenched in clear morning sunlight.
'Who in the hell,' Calvin said to the back of my head, 'is Govert Flinck?'
Chapter 9
Govert Flinck (aka Govaert Flink), b. Cleves, 1615; d. Amsterdam, 1660.
Or maybe it was 1670. Either way, I told Calvin, he was bad news. Flinck had been another of Rembrandt's students. Not as famous anymore as some of the others have become, but well-known in his day, and-this was the bad news-particularly gifted in imitating the style of his master, as anyone who has seen his portrait of Rembrandt in London's National Gallery can attest. So gifted, in fact, that long after he left the workshop, he was going around selling his own paintings as Rembrandts. And getting away with it.
Had he been capable of painting the portrait in question, Calvin wanted to know.
That was the question, all right. Flinck had been a fine artist, good enough to take commissions away from Rembrandt-on his own merits-in the 1640s. There were pictures of his not only in the National Gallery, but the Met, the Louvre, and the Hermitage. When he'd been on his form, not too many of his contemporaries could beat him.
'Well, I'll need to look at it again,' I said, 'but I'd say that, at his best-his absolute best-probably, he could.'
And was I capable of telling if he had? Calvin persisted.
'I don't know. Maybe.'
'Jeez,' said Calvin, 'this thing isn't getting any tidier, is it?'
'You know, Calvin,' I said, still looking out the window, 'this question of who did or didn't paint that picture doesn't seem quite so important anymore. We've got a bigger problem to worry about now.'
He looked up, squinting against the sunlight. 'Who owns it, you mean. Can this guy Mann prove his case?'
'Exactly.'
A lot of claims like this one had been made in the fifty years since World War II. Some had been won, but many more had been lost. For one thing, the more time passed, the harder it was to prove anything about anything, particularly when it involved the Occupation, an era that everyone would like to forget. For another, not everybody who made a charge like this was honest. Crooks and poseurs had gotten in on it, as on anything else where big money was involved, and as a result the rules of evidence had gotten very strict. Moreover, French law made it extremely difficult to get anything done about a crime committed more than thirty years ago. For that matter, what crime had Vachey committed? Mann himself said the painting had been bought, not stolen, but on the other hand…
'No,' I said, turning from the window with a sigh, 'who am I supposed to be kidding? The question isn't how good a case he can make, the question is, do we-Tony, you, me, the SAM board-want to get into the middle of a disputed ownership contest, especially one like this?'
'I don't see that we're in the middle of it,' Calvin said. 'This is between this guy and Vachey. Where do we come into it?'
'We come into it because we have to decide whether to take the painting or not. If we do, then it's us he'll have to make a claim against to get it back.'
'So? Let's say the courts say it's rightfully his. That's that, he gets it. There's no problem. Nobody at SAM is going to fight him on that, Chris. You know that.'
'Sure, but say he loses. Maybe it's not 'technically' his. Maybe his story doesn't stand up to the rules of evidence. What difference would it make? Regardless of what the courts decided, would we want it as long as we thought there might be any truth at all in what he says?' I shook my head roughly. 'I don't know, the whole thing has turned so… so ugly-I'm starting to think we don't want anything to do with it.'
Calvin put his coffee down on the end table and came to stand with me at the window. 'Now, listen to me for just a minute,' he said firmly. 'You're jumping to conclusions. Why don't you just do your job and wait and see what happens? Even if this guy thinks he's telling the truth, that doesn't mean that's the way it was, you know. He was, what, seven at the time? So the chances are he's repeating things he heard from his father, not things he really remembers for himself.'
This was Calvin earning his keep, Calvin the realist, the hard-headed M.B.A. snapping the muzzy, oversensitive art historian out of his funk and putting him back on track. Or trying to.
'That doesn't mean they aren't true,' I said stubbornly.
'Look, Chris, how could he even know what Vachey's picture looks like? Vachey kept it a secret from everybody. Hell, we were the ones he was giving it to, and he wouldn't even let us see it ahead of time. Unless Mann was one of those hundred people there last night, which he wasn't, there'd be no way for him to have any idea if this was his father's painting or not. I'm telling you, the guy could be inventing the whole thing. He's probably just another crook.' He grinned. 'Think positive.'
I drained my coffee and smiled back, but thinking positively was more than I could do. There was a queasy
