Alfred Lindon

Alfred Lindon (born Abner Lindenbaum; – 1948) was a Polish jeweller from a poor Jewish background who became an expert on pearls. He married into the Citroën family and built an important collection of modern art that was looted by the Nazis in occupied Paris during the Second World War. He lived to see some of his paintings returned, although others were returned to his heirs after his death. Early life and family Lindon was born Abner Lindenbaum around 1867 at Kraków in the Grand Duchy of Kraków, a territory that is now in Poland. His father was Moses Lindenbaum, and his mother was Caroline Weil. He married Fernande Citroën (1874–1963), sister of the motor manufacturer André Citroën, and they had five sons – Lucien, Maxime, Raymond, Maurice and Jacques. His grandson Jérôme Lindon (d. 2001), Raymond's son, became an important figure in French publishing. His great-grandsons are the journalist and writer Mathieu Lindon, and the actor Vincent Lindon. Career Lindenbaum worked in the jewellery business, becoming an expert in pearls. He was in partnership with Adolf Weil and Lewis Lindenbaum as a diamond merchant at 25 Hatton Garden, London, and 48 rue La Fayette, Paris, where they traded as Lindenbaum and Weil. The firm had been trading since at least the early 1890s. In 1901 it was the buyer of a six-row Napoleonic necklace of pearls for £20,000 at Christie's in London. That partnership was dissolved at the end of 1911. Thereafter, Weil and the Lindenbaums bid separately for expensive pearls in London auctions. In 1916, a Lindenbaum was the under bidder on a pearl necklace at Christie's that sold for £24,000.