Alphonse Kann was a prominent French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 art collector of Jewish heritage. He was a childhood playmate and adult friend of the writer Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...

, who incorporated several of Kann's features into the character Charles Swann (in Swann in Love).

The name Kann, written with double "nn", was said in Paris to be "le plus chic du chic". Known for his discerning taste and shrewd collecting instincts, Kann shocked the art world in 1927 by auctioning off most of his Old Master

Old Master

"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...

 collection (including works by Bruegel

Bruegel

Bruegel is an independent economic think tank, based in Brussels. It focuses on economic policy. Bruegel's governance and funding model relies on memberships from Member States of the European Union, international corporations, and other institutions....

, Cimabue

Cimabue

Cimabue , also known as Bencivieni di Pepo or in modern Italian, Benvenuto di Giuseppe, was an Italian painter and creator of mosaics from Florence....

, Fragonard

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five...

, Pollaiuolo

Pollaiuolo

Pollaiulo is the name of several people:* Brothers Antonio del Pollaiolo and* Piero del Pollaiolo, 15th-Century artists....

, Rubens

Rubens

Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens , the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens (composer) Rubens is...

 and Tintoretto

Tintoretto

Tintoretto , real name Jacopo Comin, was a Venetian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso...

) in order to concentrate on the acquisition of 19th century and modern art, which he collected vigorously over the following decade.

Kann left France for England in 1938 without making an inventory of his eclectic art collection, which was kept in a St.-Germain-en-Laye mansion and subsequently looted in October 1940 by Nazi occupiers. Kann recovered only a small fraction of his large collection before his death in England in 1948. Although he did not live to see a copy, the Nazi inventory of Kann's art collection ran to 60 typed pages. Decades after the war, several paintings from Kann's collection were discovered in prominent European and U.S. museums. "Smoke Over Rooftops," a 1911 painting by Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

, was returned in October 2008 to Kann's heirs by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is a fine art museum located in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a campus that covers nearly 8 acres , formerly Morrison Park...

 after an eleven-year investigation.

In the 1990s, eight antique manuscripts once owned by Kann turned up the vaults of Wildenstein & Company

Daniel Wildenstein

Daniel Leopold Wildenstein was a French art dealer and scholar, as well as a leading thoroughbred race horse owner and breeder....

, still bearing the distinctive Nazi catalog numbers ("KA 879" to "KA 886", in red pencil) likely made by Bruno Lohse

Bruno Lohse

Bruno Lohse was a German art dealer who, during World War II, became the chief art looter in Paris for Hermann Göring, helping the Nazi leader amass a vast collection of plundered artworks...

 as he processed the Kann collection in the Jeu de Paume

Jeu de paume

Jeu de paume is a ball-and-court game that originated in France. It was an indoor precursor of tennis played without racquets, though these were eventually introduced. It is a former Olympic sport, and has the oldest ongoing annual world championship in sport, first established over 250 years ago...

. The discovery of the missing manuscripts prompted a lawsuit by Kann's heirs against Wildenstein & Company.