The Rembrandt Affair was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 2010. A Rembrandt portrait stolen during the Holocaust surfaces in the possession of a London art dealer — who is promptly murdered. The painting’s provenance trail leads Allon through the interlocking worlds of the legitimate art market, wartime looting, Swiss banking, and the arms trade. The investigation reveals that the painting has been used as collateral in an arms deal, connecting Holocaust-era theft to contemporary weapons proliferation.
The novel returns to the series’ foundational concerns: the persistence of Holocaust-era crimes in the present, the complicity of institutions (banks, auction houses, museums) in maintaining the profitable fiction that looted art has “clean” provenance, and the impossibility of separating aesthetic beauty from the violence of its acquisition.
Provenance and Complicity
The novel’s art-world critique is among the series’ most pointed. The international art market’s resistance to provenance research — the reluctance of auction houses, dealers, and museums to investigate whether works in their possession were looted during the Holocaust — is presented not as an oversight but as a deliberate commercial decision. Ignorance is profitable; knowledge is expensive. This critique has been substantiated by real investigations into major auction houses and museums.
Collecting The Rembrandt Affair
First edition (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2010): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine in dust jacket: $20–$40
- Signed first edition: $50–$150
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest. Signed copies should reach $100–$300.