Spaniard

Antoine Vollon showed this full-length figure at the Salon of 1878. A young man in black Spanish dress lets cigarette smoke curl from his fingers, a brindle bulldog sits at his feet, and a wicker-covered flask stands on the table behind him. Its later life can be followed through sales. It belonged to a doctor in Soissons and fetched 13,300 francs at auction in Paris in 1912. At a sale in 1935 it went for less than a tenth of that price. In 1942, during the German occupation, a German buyer, Adolf Wüster, gave it to the museum in Wuppertal. Found in Germany after the war, it returned to France in 1948. Its ownership between 1933 and 1945 has never been fully traced, so the national museums hold it in trust, and an owner's heirs could still claim it.