Nelly Toll | Six watercolours painted whilst in hiding from the Nazis, 1943

Nelly Toll

Six watercolours painted whilst in hiding from the Nazis, 1943

Painted by the eight-year-old Nelly during thirteen months in hiding from the Nazis with her mother in Lwów, Poland, ranging in size (from 133 x 197mm. to 197 x 267mm.), one watercolour dated 29 July 1943, another just dated 1943, each drawing hinged to a mount, later manuscript captions on versos of mounts, small marginal fraying and tears, comprising: 

1. "Finding a lady to hide Alicia was not easy";

2. "Eva and her brother play with the cats"; 

3. "Alicia finds her freedom";

4. "Villager with chickens"; 

5. "Safe home to hide before final escape"; 

6. "History class"

A REMARKABLE SERIES OF WATERCOLOURS PROVIDING A WINDOW INTO THE EXTRAORDINARY IMAGINATION OF A CHILD OF THE HOLOCAUST.

Arranged by her father, eight-year-old Nelly and her mother found safe haven in a two-room apartment in a building they had once owned, living with their former tenants. There, Nelly and her mother shared the cramped space with a gentile couple—the kindly Pani Krysia Wojtkowa and her eccentric, ill-tempered husband. When unexpected visitors arrived, Nelly and her mother hid in the "secret window" which had been bricked up. It was there that Nelly read, wrote in her diary, and painted.

In her diary, Nelly wrote of the tragic events she experienced in Lwów, her inconsolable grief over the loss of family members, and her fear of living day to day in hiding. Conversely, Nelly's paintings, full of colour and life, depict the vivid imagination of a child escaping into a fantasy world of fresh air, blue skies, friends, family, and scampering pets. The small watercolours are accomplished with a remarkable sense of form, perspective, and colour.

Nelly Toll painted no less than sixty-four watercolours during her thirteen months in hiding. Twenty-nine are reproduced in her memoir Behind the Secret Window (Dial Books, 1993). As an adult, she parted with a number of her childhood paintings in the hope of educating more and more and more people about the physical and emotional devastation wrought by the Holocaust. Eight watercolours are in the permanent collection of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum.

After the war, Toll settled in the United States where she studied fine art, earnt a doctorate on Holocaust art and education, lectured on the art and history of the Holocaust at Penn GSE, and adapted her award-winning memoir for the stage. In 2016, she poignantly opened the Deutsches Historiche Museum's exhibition of art produced during the Holocaust, as the only surviving artist with work on display. She continued to paint, and died in 2021, aged 88.

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby's, New York, 26 June 1998, lot 549 (please note that the titles for 5 of the 6 watercolours in the 1998 cataloguing differ slightly from the manuscript captions listed in this cataloguing, though the artworks are the same).