Episode #98: Cherchez La Femme, or The Woman Behind the Art--Rose Valland (Season 11, Episode 7)
There’s a phrase in the French language that goes, “Cherchez la femme.” In translation, it means “find the woman,” or “look for the woman,” and typically it’s derogatory, a phrase used as an explanation for the reasons why a man may be behaving badly. Cherchez la femme, some say, meaning that “woman troubles” are assumed to be at the core of any man’s real problems. But I like the idea of appropriating the phrase “cherchez la femme” to mean that we’re going to look for the women who made things right in art history, who bolstered and brought attention to some big-name artists.
In season 11 of ArtCurious, we’re highlighting the lives and work of the women who supported some of the world’s favorite artists. Today, I am so excited to share with you the life of Rose Valland, a great World War Two hero who personally helped save thousands of works of art from being destroyed or lost forever.
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Episode Credits:
Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis. Additional music by Storyblocks. Research help by Mary Beth Soya.
ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.
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Episode Transcript
Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. In ArtCurious Season 11, we’re highlighting the lives and work of the women who supported some of the world’s favorite artists. Today, I am so excited to share with you the life of Rose Valland, a great World War Two hero who personally helped save thousands of works of art from being destroyed or lost forever. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.
I mentioned in our last episode, which covered Jo van Gogh-Bonger, that there were a couple of women whom I have long wanted to portray in future episodes of ArtCurious. Jo van Gogh was one of them, and the other is today’s subject, Rose Valland. All the way back in episode #29, which profiled the Monuments Men as part of our season on Art and World War Two, I said, and I quote, “I didn’t get to tell you about one of the most incredible figures involved with the Monuments Men-- Rose Valland, a French art historian and curator at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris who single-handedly saved thousands of works of art by secretly cataloguing Nazi looting. But that’s an entire episode for another season of the ArtCurious podcast-- and don’t worry, I definitely want to tell you all about her.” Well, everyone? It’s finally time.
Rose Valland became one of the few “Monuments Women” in the entirety of the organization we know refer to, colloquially, as “The Monuments Men,” but the full organization is known as the MFAA, or the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Program. This team of folks from several allied nations was comprised of a team of elite curators, art historians, professors, and art professionals without whom some of Europe’s greatest treasures would have been destroyed during the darkest days of World War Two. I encourage you, if you haven’t already, to go back and listen to episode #29, because it’ll give you the backstory of the Monuments Men, how the organization was formed and by whom, and profiles some of their missions. But I mostly covered the Monuments Men in that episode, not women—among whom Rose Valland is probably the most well-known.
Rose Valland was Born on November 1, 1898, in the small farming town of Saint-Étienne-de-Saint-Geoirs, in southeastern France. So often we think of the art world as a rarified space—both fairly and unfairly, and that’s long been the case, so for someone like Rose Valland, who was born into an unassuming blue-collar household to grow up to become a curator and art historian was not a given. But her promise—her giftedness—was readily apparent as a child, and she a scholarship to a teaching school, originally training with hope of being—you guessed it—a teacher. But not just any kind of teacher—she wanted to teach art. So she moved about 80 kilometers away from Saint-Étienne to Lyon, where she attended the École nationale des beaux-arts, emphasizing how to teach both artmaking and art history. After she graduated in 1922, she moved to Paris for further study at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts and, three years later, she graduated and secured a spot as a high school art teacher, focusing on draftsmanship. And while that was great—I mean, it was her intention all along, right?—she started to notice that her passions had shifted. She couldn’t keep away from wanting to learn more and more about art history. Talking about a woman after my own heart. So for the better art of the next decade, she took graduate-level courses at the Collège de France, the Sorbonne, and the École du Louvre, the school closely associated with the famed museum. And eventually, it paid off. She first got her foot in the door, like so many do in the art world, in 1932 as an unpaid volunteer—holla to all my docents and volunteers out there!—at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. The Jeu de Paume had originally opened as a small extension of the Louvre, and acted as a kind of sister institution to the nearby Musée de l'Orangerie, famed for its collection of impressionist works, especially eight stunning paintings of waterlilies by Claude Monet. But in the 1920s it became its own independent space that showcased works from outside of France. It moved thus ever closer to the avant-garde.
The avant-garde provides me with the chance to talk about what was going on in France’s neighbor to the northeast: Germany. In the year after Rose Valland began working at the Jeu de Paume, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933 of Germany. And one of his quick actions was to declare war on what he called, quote, “cultural degeneracy,” ordering the removal and/or destruction of items that did not match his strict personal definition of “good” art. Avant-garde art in particular were reviled by Hitler, and he’d later advocate for a landmark show, infamously known as the Degenerate Art Exhibition, that corralled examples of what he and his cronies considered the worst of the worst: think Georg Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Marc Chagall, among many, many others. I spoke at length about the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Episode #54 about Otto Dix, so please go back and listen—it’s one of my favorites. So Hitler was hoping to mock, deride, and eventually destroy “bad” art. Simultaneously, he dreamed of creating his own monumental art museum to celebrate “good art” instead—and also glorify himself in the process. I won’t go into it terribly much here since I have an entire episode from our second season about Hitler’s Führermuseum, but in short, this museum fueled the systematic looting and destruction of artistic and cultural treasures during World War Two. And that’s where we find Rose Valland next—in the midst of the war.
In 1940, Germany invaded France and eventually occupied the country, an occupation that would last until the Liberation of Paris in 1944. As part of their mission for the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, an organization founded to assist in looting art for Hitler and other top German officials, the Nazis took over the Jeu de Paume as their headquarters for the ERR. It thus became their central collecting point in Paris for much of the works of art that the Nazis stole from both private and public collections in France during the war, especially from Jewish households. Focused, as they were, on their terrible project, they needed to make the Jeu de Paume as secure as possible for their needs, so they dismissed almost all of the museum’s the employees… but they overlooked one. Rose was quiet, unassuming, a little mousy, with brown hair, round granny classes, and a long-oval face. She didn’t seem like anyone important to the Nazis, when, in fact, she was acting as the director of the Jeu de Paume at this point after the chief curator was struck ill. (And good news, this position was a paid one!) . But the Nazis didn’t know that, so they decided that this know-nothing woman could stay. And plus, it’s not like Rose, or anyone else, one would really understand what they were doing, because they’d speak German. And who in France would know any German, right?
Well, one person did—and you know exactly who it is. Rose Valland gets to use her German language skills to become an art world hero right after these quick messages. Thanks for listening.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
We don’t know exactly how Rose Valland came to learn German, because sources are mixed on this one. Some researchers note that she had some formal training in the language as part of her arts education, which does track for me—after all, art history was founded, truly, by German scholars and even when I was coming up in the field, I had to pass a German language reading exam to qualify for my Ph.D. candidacy. German has long been the language of art history, and so it wouldn’t be surprising to know that Valland studied it. Others, though, claimed that Valland had no knowledge of German outside of a brief working knowledge gleaned simply from having traveled in Germany throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Regardless, what truly matters is that Rose Valland did know at least some German, and that allowed her to surreptitiously eavesdrop on the Nazis’ conversations each and every day.
And it wasn’t just her language skills that were top notch—she also had an incredible memory, so as the Nazis began plotting the shipments of their stolen goods, she not only listened in, but she remembered the details: what work of art was being shipped where, and for whose use or purpose, and who would be there, potentially, on the other end to receive the work of art. She listened carefully to Nazi security guards, truck drivers, shipment coordinators, and visiting officials. She’d remember it all, noting everything down each night in a register she kept hidden away in her apartment. Over the four years of German occupation, that register would grow to contain details about the movement of over 20,000 paintings, jewels, sculptures, furniture and more, tracing its departure for cities, towns, and salt mines in Germany, the South of France, Austria, and beyond. All of this she would eventually pass on to the French Resistance.
Rose Valland was quiet, unassuming, a bit austere, and so her actions were not discovered by the occupying Germans—but that doesn’t mean that she was safe in her position by any means. Not only did she use her impeccable memory to keep note of the actions of the Nazis at the Jeu de Paume, but multiple times she also squirreled away film negatives, meant to provide a visual representation of that day’s covert art shipment to Nazi holding locations. Valland would develop copies of the photos for her own files before putting the negatives back in their respective files, thereby creating her own visual record of art shipments. But imagine if she was caught, if she was discovered just once with her secret stash of documents and photo negatives—she might have been detained, immediately sent on to a concentration camp, or even executed outright. Imagine desperately pretending that you can’t speak a language, making sure that your face doesn’t betray any reaction or knowledge, holding yourself together day after day, with mounting anxiety, to bear witness. Rose Valland put herself in the line of danger every day at the Jeu de Paume for the sake of art and culture—the building blocks of humanity. As she later noted, she, quote, “wanted to save some of the beauty of the world.”
Valland also got a front-row seat to watch the works of art being considered for Hitler’s Führermuseum, as well as the personal collections of other top-ranking Nazis. The pecking order for the stolen goods began with Hitler at the top, followed by the private collection of the Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring . Thirdly, Alfred Rosenberg, the head and namesake of the ERR, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, could have dibs on Hitler’s and Göring ’s leftovers, but he apparently had little to no interest in collecting art; everything else, then, was destined to be scattered among Germany’s public art institutions for the glorification of the Reich. Valland, then, was able to witness as the Nazis essentially “shopped” for their favorite works of art. Göring himself visited the Jeu de Paume over twenty times to select works to submit back to Hitler for approval, after key pieces were put aside for his perusal by chief art looter and art dealer Bruno Lohse, alongside art historians Hermann Bunjes and Kurt von Behr. Though they let her stay around at the Jeu de Paume, Lohse and von Behr were suspicious of Valland, and they repeatedly interrogated her—in French, I’m assuming. If anything remotely went wrong at the Jeu de Paume, she was blamed: a missing box? Valland stole it. A shipment was late? Valland must have sabotaged it somehow. Lohse in particular threatened Valland with execution, but she stood her ground, noting that she would not reveal secrets of their looting scheme, declaring to him, quote, “No one here is stupid enough to ignore the risk.” She was lying, of course—Rose Valland was not stupid, not even a little bit, but she was playing the Nazis, constantly intercepting information gleaned from official records, casual gossip, and shouted orders—and she passed it all along to the French Resistance and the Monuments Men via her boss, Jaques Jaujard, the director of the French National Museums.
Jaujard, it turns out, would be one of Rose Valland’s only true allies during the Occupation of France. He spearheaded the evacuation of the Louvre—not only of people, but of its artworks—in the year prior to the 1940 invasion, so Valland knew that he understood the importance of safeguarding works of art. But by 1944, collaborationism in France had grown exponentially, so it was difficult to discern who, in Paris, was actively or secretly working with the Nazi regime. So Valland shared her knowledge with Jaujard, and Jaujard only, for the longest time. At the same time, the knowledge that the war was coming to a head meant that the exploits of the ERR, especially in the service of Hitler’s Führermuseum, ramped up. More works of art—especially from the homes of French Jews—were being looted, and thus rerouted to other Nazi strongholds, such as the famed castle of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. In the final weeks before the liberation of Paris by the Allies, the Nazis at the Jeu de Paume planned one giant evacuation of their stolen treasures, panicking that they were running out of time. Ever watchful and dedicated, Valland took note and did all she could to forestall the evacuation. In early August of 1944, five railroad cars bearing 148 crates full of paintings—totaling nearly 1,000 individual works of art, including modern masterworks by Picasso, Cézanne, Modigliani, Degas, and Gauguin—were prepared for connection to almost 50 additional train cars filled with furniture and additional looted goods. The train cars, though, were not finished being prepped, so its departure was delayed, which gave Rose Valland just enough time to secrete the shipment log to Jaujuard, who passed it along to the French Resistance. Be it fate, or the French, or just a slew of good luck, what happened next reads a bit like a comedy of errors. The delayed train took nearly a week to leave the station, by which time the French railway workers had gone on strike (of course they went on strike). Once the strike was completed, other high priority trains—these ones carrying Germans fleeing France—departed, while the art-filled train, known as Train 40044, waited. But wait, there’s more! Once the train finally departed, weeks after its original intended exit, it was terribly overloaded, towing a total of 53 cars. So it’s perhaps not a huge surprise to know that the engine soon experienced a mechanical failure, which took the Germans two days to repair. By that time, the French Resistance had derailed two additional trains, thereby blocking Train 40044’s path—allowing the Resistance, and then the Monuments Men, to come in and secure the train, and its priceless cargo.
We’re not done with Rose Valland just yet. The rest of the story is coming up next—right after this break. Come right back.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
It’s true that fate played a big role in the eventual containment of Train 40044, but without Rose Valland to intercept the train’s information, which included everything from the contents of each crate to the final planned location of each train car, it’s entirely possible that many of those artworks aboard would have disappeared, like so many other works captured and looted during the war. I don’t want to overemphasize Valland’s involvement in World War II, a war with absolutely dire consequences for humankind, let alone for inanimate objects of cultural or artistic significance, but I don’t want to underestimate her story here, either. She put her life on the line—as many folks did, from many different Allied nations—to save works of art, to celebrate humankind’s creativity, history, and beauty during a devastating and dark time.
When the war ended in 1945, Rose Valland’s job was not yet done. Though she was very briefly detained after the Liberation of Paris on the assumption that she was a Nazi collaborationist, she nevertheless maintained her dedication to the rescue and recovery of so many of the works of art whose looting she had witnessed firsthand. She applied to the French First Army in May 1945, where she received her wished-for assignment as a member of the Commission for the Recovery of Works of Art. At that point, she used her incredible stash of documents and record books to lead members of the Monuments Men from both the U.S. and from Great Britain to huge caches of stolen art, including those at Neuschwanstein castle, where nearly 20,000 objects were held. She personally helped identify works of art and aided directly in their restitution, especially to French museums and private institutions. Now, this is a process that is still ongoing today—not everything looted during the War has been located, nor has everything been returned to its rightful owners even if identified, but that’s another story for another day. But Rose Valland, with her secret German knowledge, excellent memory, and record-keeping skills—not to say her calm and clear head—sped the process way, way up. According to a 2013 report made to the French senate, it has been estimated that about 60,000 works of art were located by the Commission for the Recovery of Works of Art, in association with the Monuments Men, and that about three quarters of that art was returned to France before 1950. And a chunk of that was due, in no small part, to the actions of Rose Valland.
It wasn’t just in the restitution of the arts that Valland proved useful. During the Nuremburg Trials in 1946, she was called upon to act as a witness, where she directly identified Hermann Göring as one of the chief architects of art looting. She was also able to identify other culpable Germans, as she possessed the Jeu de Paume’s visitor logbook, wherein the names of all entrants to the museum were recorded.
It cheers me to no end to note that Rose Valland was celebrated during her lifetime for her work. She rose through the ranks of the French Army while coordinating the restitution in the years following the war, eventually garnering the title of captain. In 1954, she was named the chair of the Commission for the Protection of Works of Art, after finally having been given the title of “curator” of the Musées Nationaux just a year prior. After the war, Jacques Jaujard contributed a report to the French government detailing efforts to both curb art looting and to restore works that were taken, and his discussions of Valland’s actions and contributions alone totaled eight long pages, which he concluded be noting that she, quote, “endured four years of daily renewed risks in order to save our works of art.” Valland thusly received several important awards, such as the French Legion of Honor; the Medal of the Résistance; she was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government; and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1948.
Rose Valland retired from public service in 1963—the year after she published her memoirs-- but continued to assist in repatriation efforts from the Second World War, decades after it ended. She also continued learning, too, registering for courses at the Sorbonne alongside her partner, Joyce Helen Heer. She lived out the remainder of her life peacefully and quietly before passing away on September 18, 1980, at the age of 82. She is buried in her hometown of Saint-Étienne-de-Saint-Geoirs, and it is there that her memory still shines so brightly, thanks to the work of the Association de la Mémoire de Rose Valland, dedicated to keeping her story alive—because it is a story worth remembering. Here was a courageous woman who risked her own life for the sake of protecting her nation’s cultural heritage and working with hundreds of others after the war to return those pieces to their rightful homes. If you ever get the chance to visit the Jeu de Paume in Paris, make sure you visit the South-facing wall of the building’s exterior. Here you’ll see a stone plaque commemorating her important role in the war—a beautiful and fitting monument to a Monument Woman, on the building from where she undertook her life’s greatest works.
Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal. HUGE thanks to Mary Beth Soya for her awesome research for this episode and for almost all of our episodes this season. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com. Our podcast is co-produced by Kaboonki - podcasts, creative video, and more. Subscribe to their show, Subgenre, a podcast about the movies, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at subgenrepodcast.com. Kaboonki: Leave your mark. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com.
The ArtCurious Podcast is also fiscally sponsored by VAE Raleigh, a 501c3 nonprofit creativity incubator, which means you can donate tax-free to “ArtCurious” to show your support. To find the donation links and for more details about our show, please visit our website: artcuriouspodcast.com. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram at artcuriouspod.
Check back with us soon as we explore the lives and works of incredible women who supported the unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful world of art history.
