Provenance

By Howard Kwon

The very last thing that Professor Sabine Simon Elsberg would ever have expected to see while visiting a small college in Brooklyn was the painting that had belonged to her family for hundreds of years, but which she had not seen since she was a child during the war. Although she had absolutely no idea why it had suddenly appeared nearly a half-century later and thousands of miles from where it once hung in her childhood home, she was determined to find the answer. The fateful struggles of a promising young painter during the height of the Dutch Golden Age, the perilous escape of a desperate Jewish family from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, and the tenacious quest of a brilliant economics professor to reclaim a forgotten part of her past, are all linked together by an intriguing painting with an extraordinary history. Provenance chronicles the painting’s incredible journey over four centuries and two continents, as viewed from the perspectives of those individuals into whose lives the painting entered and forever changed. The book focuses on three critical and defining events in the painting’s history: the creation of the painting by the Dutch master Rembrandt and his young Jewish apprentice in 1641; the confiscation of the painting by the Nazis in 1942 and its mysterious disappearance; and the unexpected discovery of the painting in 1990 by the surviving daughter of its previous owner and her ensuing attempts to recover it. The result is a fast-paced and absorbing account of familial devotion, personal sacrifice, and enduring love that transcends time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Howard Kwon
• Release date: Jun 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781938135149

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PROVENANCE

by

Howard A. Kwon

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

PROVENANCE

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Copyright © 2012 Howard A. Kwon. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

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Cover Designed by Telemachus Press, LLC

Cover art:

Copyright © 2012 Telemachus Press, LLC Based on a faithful photographic reproduction of an original two-dimensional work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

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ISBN: 978-1-938135-14-9 (eBook)

Version 2012.06.16

Table of Contents

Part One

CREATION

Chapter One

New Jerusalem

Chapter Two

The House at Number 4 Breestraat

Chapter Three

Joseph and the Artist

Chapter Four

A Patron of the Arts

Chapter Five

The Sitting

Chapter Six

The Portrait

Chapter Seven

The Unveiling

Chapter Eight

The Artist Known as Hurwitz

Part Two

CONFISCATION

Chapter Nine

Enemy Property

Chapter Ten

The Collection

Chapter Eleven

The House at Number 172 Breestraat

Chapter Twelve

The Deal

Chapter Thirteen

The Commission

Chapter Fourteen

Safekeeping

PART THREE

REUNION

Chapter Fifteen

Journey to America

Chapter Sixteen

The Discovery

Chapter Seventeen

The Search

Chapter Eighteen

The Gallery

Chapter Nineteen

A Swiss Homecoming

Chapter Twenty

A Denial of Sorts

Chapter Twenty-One

Return to Amsterdam

Chapter Twenty-Two

Black and White

Epilogue

In memory of my Dad.

Provenance

PART ONE

CREATION

Chapter One

New Jerusalem

Amsterdam, April 1641

A woman of Amsterdam peered anxiously out of her first-floor window, quickly scanning the street below. She did so even though she already knew what to expect. Her cursory examination by the dim light of the early morning was inconclusive, giving her a reason to hope for the best. Gertrude carefully descended the narrow stairs for a closer inspection. As soon as she opened the front door, she was immediately assaulted by a familiar yet pungent odor to which she had never grown accustomed, and probably never would. Having confirmed her fears, she firmly shut the door and sighed disapprovingly. The flood waters, which had receded back into the canals during the night, had left behind a dense layer of fetid mud and silt in their wake. The sun had only just risen, and Gertrude knew it would be many hours before the streets would be dry. After so many years, she still found herself surprisingly unprepared for the daily aftermath of the floods.

"The mud will impede our progress, she thought to herself. We will have to leave earlier than planned."

The flooding and draining of the streets was a familiar ritual in the Jodenburrt section of Amsterdam. Flooding was simply a fact of life in this city, which had been reclaimed centuries ago from marshland located near the point where the Rivers Amstel and IJ intersected as they wound their way north to the Zuiderzee. The city’s origins traced back to a fishing village that grew around a dam on the River Amstel in the twelfth century. To accommodate an ever-growing population, the city slowly expanded outwards from the dam into the precarious peat bogs that surrounded the original settlement. Moats were carved out from the water-logged ground to form habitable islands of land on which new communities grew.

Over time, the rough web of moats and earthen ramparts evolved into a sophisticated network of navigable canals that provided for the efficient and organized distribution of grain and timber from the agricultural areas of the south to the merchant ships docked in the bustling harbor to the north. But as much as the canals fueled the city’s rapid growth into a major economic center, they also ensured permanent separation of the different sections of the city—as well as its inhabitants—from one another. Only a few drawbridges erected in key locations throughout the city physically connected the people of Amsterdam together. The canals, in essence, defined a city of many isolated communities.

* * *

Nearly eleven years had passed since Gertrude Hurwitz and her then five-year old son Joseph first arrived in Amsterdam seeking refuge from the war that for years had ravaged their homeland in Hesse-Darmstadt (in what is now southwestern Germany). After the death of Gertrude’s husband, Jakob, there was no reason for them to stay and there was ample reason to leave. Jakob had been tragically felled by unexploded munitions that accidently detonated while he was tending the fields, and Gertrude vowed that she and Joseph would not also be consumed by the conflict and the devastation that it had wrought.

The prospect of moving to Amsterdam was intimidating for Gertrude, who had lived all of her life in the comfort of her ancestral home of Worms. She was overwhelmed with the thought of all the hardships and difficulties that they would confront in building a new life in a city whose citizens spoke a foreign language, shared a different historical and cultural heritage, and observed an unfamiliar religion. The alternative, however, was far worse. She knew that to stay in Worms would mean, at best, a life of hardship and persecution, and at worst, death for her and her child.

Like thousands of other Jewish refugees from Germany, Poland, Lithuania, and across Eastern Europe, she chose to escape the despair and misery of her homeland for the promise of a safer and better life in this iconoclast Calvinist city known by Jews throughout northern Europe as the New Jerusalem. Following in the footsteps of thousands more who had come before them, Gertrude and her young son joined the small Ashkenazi Jewish community that had established a foothold in the Jodenburrt, Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter.

Gertrude and Joseph were more fortunate than others to have a place to call home when they arrived in the city in 1630. Gertrude’s Aunt Ruth had escaped from Heidelburg several years earlier after having lost her entire family to disease and famine. Ruth was ecstatic to have her sister’s daughter and grandson come live with her, for she would certainly enjoy their company. Ruth’s small flat was located above an old warehouse on Vlooyenburg Island, a crowded piece of marshland located at the heart of the Jodenburrt. This man-made island, bordered by the Houtgracht and Leprozengracht canals and the River Amstel, was particularly susceptible to constant flooding. The island took its name from the Dutch word for flood. Rejected by those who could afford to live in drier and more desirable areas of the city, the island attracted the swelling ranks of poor Ashkenazi Jews. It was here that Gertrude and Joseph began their new life.

The timing of Gertrude’s arrival proved extremely fortuitous for Ruth, who had injured her hip in a sudden fall not more than a month earlier. The accident had left her nearly incapacitated and no longer able to continue cleaning houses for a living. Although she received much generosity from her friends and neighbors in the community, many of whom visited her in her flat after the accident and supplied her with food and comfort, Ruth worried if she would ever be able to regain enough strength to work again and provide for herself. She had thought more than once about continuing to work despite her injuries, only to be reminded of the fallacy of such thoughts by the excruciating pain radiating from her hip when she tried to walk. Fiercely independent and proud, Ruth certainly could not depend on the charity of her friends and neighbors forever.

Ruth wasted no time in finding Gertrude employment as a housekeeper, cleaning the houses that Ruth had cleaned before the accident. Many of the homeowners had not hired anyone to replace Ruth in hopes that she would soon return. In any event, good housekeepers were a scarce commodity in Amsterdam; there was high demand for their services. Gertrude, for her part, was thankful for the opportunity to work and take care of her ailing aunt who had graciously opened her home to her and her young son.

Gertrude remained concerned about Joseph, her only living child. Gertrude had lost another child at birth and was determined not to live to see the death of another. As a result, Gertrude developed a propensity to be overprotective. Gertrude did not like leaving Joseph home at such a young age, despite the fact that Ruth had happily volunteered to watch him while she worked. He was shy and introverted—almost to a fault—and she worried about how Joseph would react to having to stay in a small space with her disabled and elderly aunt. Gertrude also worried that Ruth would not have the strength or patience to care for Joseph, as she was unaccustomed to being with children over long periods, never having had any of her own.

As it turned out, however, Gertrude’s concerns proved to be without merit and quickly faded. Ruth and Joseph developed a special bond as they soon learned that they shared a common interest. Ruth happily noticed Joseph’s keen fascination with the charcoal sketches that adorned the walls of the flat, all of which Ruth had rendered herself when she was much younger. The arthritis in her hands and her failing eyesight had substantially diminished her ability to draw with the ease and finesse that had marked her younger years. But such physical ailments could not diminish Ruth’s desire to teach Joseph, who clearly displayed a remarkable aptitude for drawing.

"Er hat Das Geschenk, she thought to herself as she watched Joseph draw with the paper and charcoal pieces she provided. Although there was no doubt that Joseph had The Gift," like she and her father before her had, Ruth knew that Joseph’s natural abilities needed to be refined and developed with practice.

Ruth began to teach Joseph to draw the way her father had taught her. At first, Ruth would sketch a picture and Joseph would eagerly watch as the seemingly random strokes of her hand transformed into a picture of a horse or some other familiar object. Then Joseph would draw the same picture, only much faster than his aunt. Eventually, Joseph took his own lead and began to draw