The Forest

Boucher signed and dated this large landscape in 1740, a clearing in a wood where travellers stop to rest. Its recent history is the longer story. On 13 and 14 February 1941, in occupied Paris, the Dubois-Chefdebien collection was sold at the Hôtel Drouot auction rooms, and this canvas went to Eugen Brüschwiler, a Munich dealer. That November it was acquired for the museum Hitler planned for Linz, the Austrian city where he grew up. By the end of the war it was stored in the salt mine at Altaussee.

The Allies took it to their Central Collecting Point in Munich, and in 1951 it was sent back to France. Since 1952 the Louvre has held it as an MNR, one of the works recovered after the war that the French state keeps in custody for their rightful owners, so it is not the Louvre's property. Research has classed that 1941 public sale as one that involved no spoliation, yet the painting stays on the MNR list and can still be claimed.