Provenance

Fülszöveg

"PROVENANCE (prôv-a-nâns') n. The place of origin; derivation."
Paris, 1895: Aaron Rostand buys his first painting — a Vermeer — at auction for 200 francs, founding his gallery and the family fortune.
Paris, 1940: Paul Drach, warned that his name appears on a Gestapo list of suspected subversives, conceals his family's precious collection of Impressionist paintings in the false front of a truck and attempts to flee the city. He is caught and tortured by the Nazis, and soon afterwards Jewish art collections all over Paris are seized.
New York, 1979: André Rostand tries to regain his father's painting in an auction at Sotheby Parke Bernet. Fearful that rival dealers might be conspiring against him, he retains Alex Drach, a young art investigator to whom he has long acted as guardian and friend.
Provenance is a sweeping and powerful novel about a hoard of art masterpieces stolen by the Nazis during World War II — those who collected the paintings, stole them, and now^propose to... Tovább

Fülszöveg

"PROVENANCE (prôv-a-nâns') n. The place of origin; derivation."
Paris, 1895: Aaron Rostand buys his first painting — a Vermeer — at auction for 200 francs, founding his gallery and the family fortune.
Paris, 1940: Paul Drach, warned that his name appears on a Gestapo list of suspected subversives, conceals his family's precious collection of Impressionist paintings in the false front of a truck and attempts to flee the city. He is caught and tortured by the Nazis, and soon afterwards Jewish art collections all over Paris are seized.
New York, 1979: André Rostand tries to regain his father's painting in an auction at Sotheby Parke Bernet. Fearful that rival dealers might be conspiring against him, he retains Alex Drach, a young art investigator to whom he has long acted as guardian and friend.
Provenance is a sweeping and powerful novel about a hoard of art masterpieces stolen by the Nazis during World War II — those who collected the paintings, stole them, and now^propose to sell them.
Provenance is.also the story of how big money gradually enters and corrupts the trade, and how paintings, which begin as a reflection of the highest aspirations of the human spirit, end by evoking its lowest.
In the galleries, offices, apartments, restaurants, and discos of New York, Paris, London, Zurich, and Rome, a host of glamorous and sinister figures mix their business and pleasure. With and around Alex Drach move detectives and security operatives, auctioneers and dealers, titans of buying and selling, bankers who control Vissza