Sherwood Smith's Reviews > Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter's Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy

This fascinating book was by turns heart-breaking and thought-provoking.

The basic outline: Elizabeth Rynecki grew up with her great-grandfather’s artwork around her, and never thought too much about it. Her grandparents didn’t talk much about the past, and only spoke Polish to one another.

Her grandfather once mentioned to her that he might write his life’s story, but she, without knowing the context—and with the quick judgment typical of the young—told him he wasn’t a writer, and the subject was dropped. However, after he died, when she and her father went to clear out his house, they not only came across the art work which she was now beginning to appreciate, but she discovered a handwritten memoir, about her grandfather’s life in Poland before World War II, and what happened to the family during the Holocaust.

That changed everything.

Using this memoir as a basis, and considerable research, Elizabeth Rynecki tells the story of Moshe Rynecki, whose deeply devout father had not wanted him to become an artist, but finally and reluctantly gave in. Moshe Rynecki spent years at his art, making some 800 pieces before the world began disintegrating around their ears.

What do you do with that much art when you have little money, you’re old, what few rights you have are being taken away by day and the Germans are coming with their guns? He ripped the art out of the frames and bundled paintings and drawings in groups of fifty, many of which he gave away. He started a kind of catalogue, but was unequal to the task . . . he told his progeny to go to safety, and his wife, but he was determined to stay with his Jewish brethren, and whatever happened to them would happen to him.

Well, it did. Meanwhile, the family was scattered, many murdered along with millions of others. The survivors, at the end of the war, then faced the monumental task of finding one another, along with some twenty million other displaced persons, with no resources. Years later they, and a small bundle of Moshe Rynecki’s art, made it to the USA for a fresh start.

Segue up to the grandfather’s death: suddenly those warm, wonderful paintings of ordinary Jewish people going about their lives had a context, and Elizabeth Rynecki was determined to recover her great-grandfather’s art as a legacy for her own family.

And so the next stage of the story begins. Right after the war, no one would take the art, when the family tried to sell some in order to survive. A few places let them know that they would gladly accept donations, but museums dedicated to the preservation of Jewish art and culture had scarce funding, and not much interest in the mainstream.

Gradually that changed—and unfortunately for Rynecki, she discovered that now that the paintings had gained worth, people wanted to hang onto them, and resisted her efforts to reach out. A lawyer who dealt with the complicated mess having to do with Jewish properties stolen by the Nazis, told her flat out that being a descendant of the artist was the least likely way to ever recover anything. Why? Because maybe the artist had given the art to a museum, which was then looted by Nazis, so the provenance would trace back to the museum. Or maybe they’d sold it, and after the Nazis looted the gallery, etc etc.

Elizabeth Rynecki had to figure out what it was she wanted to do. There was no way she was going to recover that art—but why not make a historical record? And so began detective work, meetings in several different countries, exchanges of harrowing stories going back to World War II. And the discovery that some—even fellow descendants of Holocaust victims—still refused to talk to her, to even send jpg.s of the art to be shared with the world. There is no manual, she points out, for proper behavior for descendants of Holocaust victims. Who owes what to whom? Especially in the case of art?

The book is replete with reproductions, including gleanings of pieces that seem to have been lost, and the notes at the end are as fascinating as the story itself.

Copy provided by NetGalley