Book description
As the grip of the German Occupation tightened on Paris in the summer
of 1940, Agnès Humbert, a respected art historian, took a leap of
blind faith and reckless courage. With a handful of her distinguished
colleagues at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, she helped to form one of
the first organised groups of the French Resistance. The unlikely but
highly effective Musée de l'Homme network was also to earn a tragic
place in history. In 1941 many of its members, including its
charismatic leader Boris Vildé and Agnès herself, were betrayed to the
Gestapo and imprisoned. Seven of the men were condemned to death and
executed by firing squad. The women were deported to Germany as slave
workers.
These are the events described with electrifying immediacy by Agnès
Humbert in her secret journal, first published in France in 1946 and
never before translated into English. With self-deprecating humour and
acerbic intelligence, she offers a uniquely personal and candid
perspective on this dark and dramatic period, while the striking
images that draw her artist's eye add a graphic, cinematic intensity
to her diary entries. Refusing even in the grimmest days to surrender
her compassion, humanity or talent for spotting the absurd, she writes
with a deft touch and sardonic wit that belie the palpable depth of
her conviction and outrage.
Written with all the immediacy of events just lived, Résistance
(first published as Notre guerre in Paris in 1946) stands today as a
testament to one woman's indomitable spirit, and as an eloquent
tribute to the sacrifice and courage of her comrades who did not
survive.
Agnès Humbert was born in 1896 in Dieppe, and married the artist
Georges Sabbagh in 1916. They had two sons. Agnès continued her
studies in art history, but they were divorced in 1934. In 1936 she
published an influential book Louis David: peintre et
conventionnel, which made her reputation as an art historian. The
following year she was recruited to the staff of the newly created
Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, a sister institution
to the Musée de l'Homme. After the war she refused on principle to
return to the post from which she had been sacked, but continued to
write books on art until her death in 1963.
Barbara Mellor is a translator specialising in the fine and
decorative arts, art history, architectural history, fashion and
design. Her most recent projects include The House of Dior and
The Society Portrait (both Thames & Hudson), and a series
of exhibition catalogues for individual contemporary artists. She now
divides her time between the Scottish Borders and the Aveyron.
