Rose Valland - A Resistance fighter at the 'JEU DE PAUME'

Rose Valland - a woman fighting to protect masterpieces.

Rose Valland was born in 1881 in a poor neighborhood. She studied at the Beaux Arts, a prestigious art college in Lyon in 1922 and then in Paris. Then she attended the "Ecole du Louvre" curriculum. In 1932, she decided to work for the "Jeu de Paume", a famous museum located near the Tuileries, at the center of Paris. She was an unpaid worker. By 1940, the Nazis decided to store in that museum all the works they had stolen from private collections and more precisely, Jewish ones. From that time on, Rose Valland is going to register all the works : the artist, the size, the owners, and where they are going to be taken to. It is a lot of work and of course it is illegal. She also gave information to the Resistance networks. Thus they know in which trains the works are so as to avoid any destructions during an attack.

After the war, she works with the American army to find the paintings, sculptures and all and gives them back to their legal owners. From 1945 to 1954, 60 000 works were repatriated. She is also a spy in the Soviet area and gives information about the Soviet troops and their weapons. After the war, she was in charge of the protection of art works at the "Jeu de Paume".

In 2004, a movie about her story was adapted by George Clooney. It starred Cate Blanchett as Rose Valland. 

Camille Chantoiseau