Two Greek soldiers dancing

In June 1941, in occupied Paris, the dealer André Schoeller sold this canvas to the Museum Folkwang in Essen for 150,000 francs, with no export licence. Questioned in 1945 by a commission on illicit wartime profits, he said he had sold that museum a group of pictures belonging to a Jewish man who was barred from selling them himself and needed money to leave Paris. He never named the owner and listed the work as a watercolour of Albanian dancers, so the story has never been confirmed. The painting came back from Germany in 1948, and the Louvre has held it since 1950 while the question of its owner stays open. It is a costume study from the mid-1820s. Two Souliote fighters swing into a dance in white pleated kilts and gold jackets, one face only a blur, the other figure's head cut off by the top edge.