Sarah Blake Sturgis by Alexander, Francis
This is 'Sarah Blake Sturgis' by Francis Alexander, painted in 1835. It now hangs in a private collection, but for 71 years, no one knew where it was.
The sitter is Sarah Blake Sturgis Shaw, a woman of Boston's elite. Alexander gave her a calm, direct gaze that still stops a viewer cold. The teal headband and pale blue silk dress place her firmly in the 1830s, but the face itself feels immediate.
The portrait passed to her granddaughter, who married into French aristocracy and hung it in the Chateau de La Rochette. In 1940, the Gestapo looted the chateau. The painting vanished. The family spent decades searching.
In 2011, a sharp-eyed researcher spotted it in a Munich auction catalog. The consignor claimed it was a family inheritance, but records told a different story. The real family proved provenance, and the painting was restituted. Some portraits just refuse to stay hidden.
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Transcript
She looks like any quiet 19th-century Boston portrait. But in 1940, German troops entered the French chateau where she hung. The Gestapo took her. For 70 years, no one knew where she was. Look at her eyes. She was painted to hold a room. This is Sarah Blake Sturgis, a Boston blueblood, painted in 1835. The painting traveled to France with her granddaughter. After the war, it was gone. A blank space on the wall. It reappeared in a Munich auction catalog in 2011.