The Lover's Portrait

 

The Lover's Portrait:  An Art Mystery is the second book in Jennifer Alderson's Zelda Richardson Mysteries. Three additional books have been published and all of them are art mysteries.  The author also writes the Travel Can be Murder cozy mystery series.

The Lover's Portrait alternates between the WWII era and the present day. The story opens with Philip Verbeet and Arjan van Heemsvliet storing artworks in a secret location to keep the Nazis from finding them.  The scene then flips to the present day Germany with Konrad Heider perusing his computer for sightings of paintings from his late father's lost art collection. The scene changes one more time to Amsterdam in the current year. Zelda Richardson has just been hired as an intern at The Amsterdam Museum and tasked with revising the website for an exhibition of over 3,000 stolen artworks that have gone unclaimed since WWII. When the exhibition opens one month later, Zelda is invited to attend with her boss. There she meets Rita Brouwer, an American who is claiming that her father owned one of the lesser known paintings that she calls Irises. Zelda falls in love with Rita's family story and wants to help her prove that she is the owner of the painting. When a photo of Rita and the painting appear in the newspaper the next day, another claimant comes forward. Who is the owner? The Museum meets with the claimants as an investigation into the ownership of the painting begins. 

I loved this art mystery. Zelda's extensive investigation into a stolen artwork was fascinating. Before reading the book I did not know the process that museums follow to determine the history of a painting. Alot of research has to be done concerning the artist's business and personal life. Business records, mortgages, leases, letters, birth and death records, new articles, exhibition catalogs, and government documents are reviewed to become familiar with the artist. Likewise, a claimant's background is similarly reviewed to see if it matches up with the artist's background. 

Zelda is a great amateur sleuth. With an art history baccalaureate degree, she is seeking to be admitted to a master's program in museum studies. Zelda is ambitious enough to defy her superiors at the museum. She wants to come up with new facts to impress her bosses and has to take risks to find them, even if that puts her in danger.

The other two books in the series are now on my tbr list. This mystery was that good.  5 out of 5 stars.