A tale of three cities – and one painting

It is also a story of several generations of family and nearly five decades of friendship, and it had an O. Henry-style ending that left all the principals reeling.

By NEAL HIRSCHFELD

AUGUST 19, 2020 13:54

PAUL LEVINE with ‘Paris Boulevard.’ (photo credit: Courtesy) — PAUL LEVINE with ‘Paris Boulevard.’

(photo credit: Courtesy)

The tale of the Ornsteins and the Levines and the beautiful painting of early 20th-century Paris was a tale of three cities: New York, Paris and San Juan. It was also a story of several generations of family and nearly five decades of friendship, and it had an O. Henry-style ending that left all the principals reeling.

The story begins in 1942, on West 90th Street near Broadway, where my uncle, Herman Hirschfeld, and his wife, Ruth, settled into their new apartment after marrying. With a keen eye for the finer things in life, Ruth began to accumulate antiques and artworks, among them small paintings depicting a shepherd and his sheep, cows crossing a stream, a couple standing by a door, and watercolor seascapes by a mid-20th-century artist named Henry Gasser, who had been the director of the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art and both a student and an instructor at the Art Students League in Manhattan.

Most notably there was a large oil depicting a tree-lined Parisian street during a springtime rain shower, an image replete with stately homes, horse-drawn carriages and old-fashioned newspaper kiosks. Elegantly dressed women, escorted by men wearing top hats and carrying walking sticks, took shelter under their umbrellas. A little girl dressed all in red hopscotched through the puddles.

The work, titled Paris Boulevard and enclosed in an ornately carved wood frame, was signed by an early 20th-century French artist identifying himself as V. Lebot.

For several years, the work hung prominently over the Hirschfelds’ living room sofa. Although Louise, the couple’s only child, did not have any special affection for the picture itself, she was always particularly taken with its unusual frame. In 1954, when the Hirschfelds moved to a larger apartment on East 94th Street, the painting accompanied them and occupied a similarly lofty station.

There it remained until 1985, when Herman, by now a widower and in his 80s, moved in with Louise, who by then was married and raising two daughters in a three-bedroom apartment on York Avenue.

Unable to accommodate all her parents’ possessions, Louise, who had worked as an appraiser for Christie’s East, specializing in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian works of art, and her husband, Robert Ornstein, an advertising executive and marketing headhunter, made the difficult decision to ask Doyle New York, the East Side auction house, to remove some of the items to be resold. Among them was the Lebot painting,

Now, for a brief moment, the story flashes backward in time, to the more exotic locale of San Juan, Puerto Rico, circa 1972. It was there, while on vacation at the Hotel El San Juan, that Louise and Robert first met Bunny and Paul Levine, who were then living on the Upper West Side. Bunny worked in sales for AON, a large, global, British insurance company. Paul, a licensed psychoanalyst and clinical social worker, would go on to become the executive vice president and CEO of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, one of New York City’s largest multi-service not-for-profit human service providers, with 175 programs and 80 locations.

One night the two couples went out for dinner, at which point their growing friendship was bolstered by two happy coincidences. First, both women were pregnant. Second, both were wearing identical three-piece black-and-white outfits purchased from the same boutique in Rego Park, Queens.

HAVING BEGUN their relationship on such an auspicious note, the couples went on to maintain a close friendship over the next four decades, spending many of their most treasured moments together – New Year’s Eves, theater club nights, Jewish holidays, the bar and bat mitzvahs of their children and, when the children got older, their respective weddings. In 2001, Bunny had the closest of close calls. Her company’s offices were situated in the World Trade Center’s South Tower. But on 9/11, she did not come into work. After the terrorist attacks that had killed so many of her colleagues, she retired.

Relieved that Bunny had survived, the two wives continued the tradition of celebrating their birthdays together. Born two days apart – Bunny on November 29, Louise on December 1 – the couples made a point of meeting up for a festive dinner every year.

During this period, Bunny and Paul also traveled to Paris and fell in love with that city – the gardens, the museums, the cafes, the cuisine. Over the years, they returned many times.

For various reasons, the 2012 joint birthday celebration for Bunny and Louise was held belatedly, in February. By this time, Bunny and Paul had moved to an apartment on Sutton Place. The event began with wine and cheese at their apartment.

Louise came solo this time since by now she was separated from Robert. But remembering that Louise had once worked as a fine arts appraiser for Christie’s East, Bunny suggested that she step into the den to take a look at the Hanukkah gift she had given to Paul while she and Paul dressed for dinner.

Louise complied. Suddenly Bunny and Paul heard anguished cries from the den.

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

Rushing into the den, the couple found Louise staring at the wall in utter disbelief. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she pointed to the large framed oil behind the sofa. It was all she could do to get out the words.

“This hung in my parents’ living room!”

It was, of course, the Lebot, now hanging from the wall of her very dearest friends’ den, a work she had not seen for a quarter of a century and had first appeared in her parents’ home in the early 1940s.

In the smallest of small worlds, it turned out that Bunny was a regular visitor to Doyle New York and, in search of a gift that would please her mate and fellow Francophile, she had bought the Lebot at auction for $500. (Lebot’s works have frequently sold at auctions.)

Contacted for comment, Doyle was unable to provide any further history about the painting since it had left Louise’s household in 1985. So there is no indication of whether the painting had remained at Doyle for 25 years or had been re-consigned to the gallery by other buyers. But, for the principals, the small-world coincidence has been so startling that single words seemed to serve best in summing up their reactions.

Bunny died in 2015, Robert in 2017.

But Louise continues to describe the needle-in-a-haystack occurrence as “haunting.”

And Paul, who has retired from the Jewish Board and is now a consultant, concurs. “Bashert,” he says, using a Yiddish expression that may capture the situation best.

In English, the word means, “It was meant to be.”

The writer is an author and screenwriter who lives in Portland, Oregon.