A Brush With the Past

In 1935, French artist Balthasar Klossovski de Rola--Balthus--painted a portrait of 17-year-old Sheila Pickering in Paris. The painting disappeared soon after. Fifty-five years later, a newspaper ad led Pickering’s daughter to the valuable artwork, and began her fight to regain the painting and keep it off the auction block.

I had heard about Balthus’ portrait of my mother many times before I finally saw a photograph of it a few weeks ago and began my fight to win it back.

My efforts were ignited by a telephone call from a family friend, telling me about a newspaper ad for an auction in Avignon. That call touched off a frantic drive to collect documentation proving my claim to the painting, and at one point led to a conversation with the artist.

In the years before she died, my mother often talked about the portrait that Balthus had given to her in 1935, when she was 17. The painting represented her first love, her youth and the exciting life in the bohemian world of art and literature in Paris. It disappeared when the family moved from a rented villa in the south of France the same year.

She might have gone in search of the work then, but the 1930s was a time of great turmoil in Europe. My mother and her brother moved with my grandmother to Spain, where the family had roots. Mother and my uncle immediately became involved in the civil war against Francisco Franco. She worked as a nurse on the Republican side and was jailed for a month in Barcelona before she, her mother and brother escaped to England.

Then World War II broke out. As a British citizen--her father was British businessman Robert Pickering--my mother was unable to return to France until 1945, when she moved to Paris as the wife of a British diplomat.

Soon after, she went back to Cagnes-sur-Mer, where the family had lived in 1935, and filed a report with the local police about the missing painting. She told me that she even went back to the villa, where she was disappointed to discover that the new occupants knew nothing about the missing work.

This was before Balthus had become a celebrated artist whose paintings are now priced in the millions of dollars and hang in museums all over the world.

Balthus used my mother as a model for several of his works, one of which, “La Montagne,” is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is a stunning picture set in the Swiss Alps; she is the figure reclining on the grass in the foreground holding a shepherd’s crook.

Artist and model shared a fondness for English literature. She posed for his illustrations of the classics “Wuthering Heights” and “The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland.”

Balthus had a nickname for my mother: “Sheila, Princess of Cats.” To me, the portrait he gave her has a powerful feline quality. The proud expression on the face of the girl who became my mother is like the gaze of a cat that has lifted its head from a favorite pillow to coolly, almost regally, regard an intruder in its domain.

In the portrait, my mother is shown with an open book on her lap. Unusual for Balthus, whose works seldom have words, the book is inscribed with the following message in large letters:

“An Authentic Portrait of Her Highness, Sheila, Princess of Cats . . . Painted by His Majesty, Balthus, the King of Cats Himself.”

In addition to Balthus, Mother knew many other avant-garde artists and writers. Henry Miller inscribed a copy of his then-banned “Tropic of Cancer” to her. Another friend for many years was American surrealistic photographer and artist Man Ray.

I have a photograph of myself that was taken by Man Ray when I was 4 and given to Mother.

It was clear from the fond way in which she talked about this era that Mother considered this to be the best, most exciting period of her life.

As the years went by and her health began to fail, the missing painting loomed more and more in her mind as a symbol of stolen youth and paradise lost. She died in 1978 without ever seeing it again.

That was why it was such a shock to receive the telephone call from the longtime family friend.

“Did you see the Herald Tribune Saturday?” she asked. “There’s an advertisement for an auction that’s selling a portrait of your mother.”

I quickly leafed through the pages until I reached a section devoted to art auctions in France and Europe.

Suddenly, I was looking directly into Mother’s eyes. In the middle of a large advertisement for an art auction in Avignon the coming Sunday was a portrait of Mother sitting in an armchair. She is wearing what looks like a short-sleeved silk blouse and has a book open on her lap. I knew immediately it was the lost portrait by Balthus.

It was a chilling, exciting experience. For a few moments my dead mother was resurrected before me; I instantly loved the painting. Now that I know it exists, I can hardly pass an hour without looking at it.

The ad said it all: The painting was titled “Portrait of Sheila Pickering” and painted in 1935 by Balthasar Klossovski de Rola. The advertisement noted that Sheila Pickering was also featured in the Balthus painting “La Montagne” at the Met.

My immediate reaction, of course, was that I wanted the painting. But when I called the auction house in Avignon I was shocked to discover that bidding would begin at 2.5 million francs (about $500,000). In an interview, auctioneer Jacques Desamais said he hopes to receive up to $3 million for the painting. Clearly out of my league.

But after I telephoned Balthus at his home in Rossiniere, Switzerland, I began to believe that as the only living heir to Sheila Pickering, I had a legitimate claim to the painting.

Balthus, now 82, seemed delighted to hear from me. He remembered Mother fondly and told me how disappointed he had been when he heard the painting was for sale. He said he had presented the portrait to my mother as a gift, not as something to sell. Like me, he said he was afraid that the portrait might be purchased by an investor or private company and carted off to Japan or the United States.

After reminiscing about Mother, Balthus readily offered to give me a letter stating that he had, indeed, given the painting to her in 1935 and that it was intended as a very personal gift. He said he had considered buying the painting himself, just to keep it off the speculative art market, but could not afford it.

My uncle and others who remembered the portrait also offered statements supporting my claim. With the help of these documents, my attorney was able to persuade a judge in Avignon to suspend the auction until the painting’s ownership is established.

So for the past several weeks, I have been collecting evidence. Unfortunately, one key element, the 1945 statement that my mother made to the police in Cagnes-sur-Mer, is missing.

At first, I was told that the police archives containing the document had been destroyed. Then my lawyers received a report that the archives had not been destroyed but had been removed only 15 days before the auction was to take place.

Quite understandably, auctioneer Desamais is upset about the court’s order to suspend the sale. The portrait had been the featured work in his auction, which had been advertised extensively in the United States and Japan. He stood to gain a handsome commission on an art work that he says had been found in a steamer trunk belonging to the father of a Cagnes-sur-Mer police officer, Louis Provencal.

Provencal, who works in the same department where Mother filed the original complaint, said he found the weathered portrait when he was going through the trunk after his father’s death. According to accounts in the Cagnes-sur-Mer papers, the identity of the artist came to light after the policeman took it to a local art curator for evaluation.

After Balthus confirmed that it was his work and authenticated its restoration, the painting was given to Desamais for sale.

“I contacted the art theft division of the Ministry of Interior,” Desamais said in a newspaper interview, “where no claim concerning the theft of this painting had been recorded. Moreover, the archives of the Cagnes-sur-Mer Police Department dating from before the war have been destroyed. According to French law, Monsieur Provencal must be considered as the owner in good faith of this work.

“The decision of the court (to suspend the auction) is very severe and deals me a gross prejudice because the restoration of the portrait of Sheila Pickering took six months of work. Also, I did a lot of publicity for this sale, getting in touch with potential buyers that were supposed to come from Japan and the United States.”

Although I have read dozens of news stories over the years involving bitter fights over precious art works, I never imagined myself as a participant.

But I know that if Mother were alive, she would be fighting tooth and nail for her painting. I remember sitting with her on dozens of occasions in the drawing room or the kitchen of our apartment on the Rue du Bac in Paris, talking about the portrait.

Sometimes she would blame her mother, my grandmother, for not protecting the painting. At other times she would blame the circumstances of history: the succession of civil war, war and occupation that prevented her from returning to Cagnes-sur-Mer after she discovered that the painting was missing.

When I think about those who would keep this painting from me, I think about the inscription that Balthus put on the face of the painting, dedicating it to Mother, “Princess of Cats.” If there has ever been a more personal message on a painting than that, indicating an exchange between giver and receiver, artist and model, lover and his young mistress, I would like someone to show it to me.