My Grandfather's Gallery: A Family Memoir of Art and War

Written by Anne Sinclair

Narrated by Kate Reading

On September 20, 1940, one of the most famous European art dealers disembarked in New York, one of hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing Vichy, France. Leaving behind his beloved Paris gallery, Paul Rosenberg had managed to save his family, but his paintings-modern masterpieces by Cezanne, Monet, Sisley, and others-were not so fortunate. As he fled, dozens of works were seized by Nazi forces, and the art dealer's own legacy was eradicated.

More than half a century later, Anne Sinclair uncovered a box filled with letters. Drawing on her grandfather's intimate correspondence with Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and others, Sinclair takes us on a personal journey through the life of a legendary member of the Parisian art scene in My Grandfather's Gallery. Rosenberg's story is emblematic of millions of Jews, rich and poor, whose lives were indelibly altered by World War II. Sinclair's journey to reclaim her family history paints a picture of modern art on both sides of the Atlantic between the 1920s and 1950s that reframes twentieth-century art history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Sep 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781494572587

Anne Sinclair

Anne Sinclair is Paul Rosenberg’s granddaughter and France’s best-known journalist. For thirteen years she was the host of 7 sur 7, a weekly news and politics television series that had some of the highest ratings in France. While there she interviewed all the major global figures of the day, including Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Madonna. The director of French Huffington Post, Sinclair has written two bestselling books on politics. Until 2012 she was married to Dominique Strauss-Khan.

Reviews for My Grandfather's Gallery

[louis69-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I found this book strangely unsatisfactory. Is it a biography? Or is it about being an art dealer? At the beginning I wondered if it was a history of the way that the Jews in France were treated during World War II. The book jacket says that this is an 'International Bestseller' - that surprises me.The narration jumped around - maybe a reflection of the author's journalistic experience. Considering the title purports to be about her grandfather's (Paul Rosenberg's) gallery in Paris, illustrations of the pictures he worked with are restricted to distance shots or coincidental to something else in the chosen photo. Since Paul Rosenberg gave away many pictures to public institutions, surely they would have given permission for the author to reproduce one or two for the book so that we got a better idea of what he was dealing with or why he thought that this artist or that picture was so great and worth selling.She spends a whole chapter on the relationship between Picasso and her grandfather, but it was actually his relationship with Henri Matisse and Georges Braque which seemed a lot more interesting and which could have been explored further. So many of the impressionist painters are mentioned in passing, many several times. Quite strikingly (and because he is one of my favourite painters) Seurat is only mentioned once. Did Rosenberg not like him and his style? There is no index and so it is difficult to go back and find what you are looking for or to re-read except by flicking through. For example I wanted to find the first mention of NMR (National Museums Recovery) but it eluded me - was it defined at all?I have no doubt after reading this book that Paul Rosenberg was an important figure in the art world. This memoir doesn't do him justice and really only touches the surface of the life of this man.