William Tudor Wilkinson (December 18, 1879 – April 22, 1969) was an American art collector and amateur art dealer. It was said that he gave Hermann Göring a painting in exchange for his wife's freedom from an internment camp and stored weapons and radio equipment for the French resistance during the Second World War.
Early life
William Tudor Wilkinson was born in St. Louis, Missouri on December 18, 1879. He was the son of the wealthy merchant and banker John Cabell Wilkinson of Missouri (1846–1910) and Margaret D. Ewing (1852-1926). He was one of seven children of the marriage. With no need to work, he lived a life of leisure and fashion and was once described as the Beau Brummel of St. Louis. Wilkinson was a member of the Mercantile Club and the Algonquin Golf Club and known as a horseman, polo player and singer.
In 1905, Wilkinson was convicted of stealing a number of pieces of fishing equipment over several weeks from a St. Louis store. At the time of his arrest at the store he had been planning a fishing trip to Canada and his luggage had already been sent to the railway station. The police went to the station and found four stolen fishing reels in his baggage. According to the St. Louis Republican, Wilkinson told the police that he would not be prosecuted because of his standing in St. Louis. Wilkinson reportedly received a brief prison sentence and a fine. The campaigning political newspaper Appeal to Reason contrasted the light sentence that he received for the theft with the harsh justice meted out to the poor for lesser offenses.
World War I
During the First World War, Wilkinson served in the aviation corps from 1917.
Marriage
In 1923 in Paris, Tudor Wilkinson married the English model Dolores, once described as "the loveliest showgirl in the world". The ceremony took place in the mairie of the first arrondissement and later at the oratory of the Louvre. Mr and Mrs Dudley Field Malone were the witnesses. In 1925, the American press reported that the couple lived on the Île Saint-Louis in a house overlooking Notre-Dame Cathedral, most likely the three storey apartment at 18 Quai d'Orleans referred to in later sources.
Tax debts
In 1924, Wilkinson was charged with failing to file a U.S. tax return for five years. The U.S. Marshal had failed to file a criminal warrant against Wilkinson as he was now resident abroad. The amount that it was claimed Wilkinson owed was put at $85,841. A bank account and a farm of 350 acres near Eureka, Missouri, were attached by the U.S. government in respect of the alleged debt.
World War II
Paris was occupied by the Germans during World War II. Many Allied citizens were interned and Dolores (born in England and married to an American) was detained at the German internment camp at Vittel. The camp was a former hotel and spa and relatively comfortable as internment camps go.
Tudor Wilkinson, as far as is known, was not detained. After the war, the American Office of Strategic Services Art Looting Investigation Unit wrote that he kept a watch on the Paris art market for Sepp Angerer, Hermann Göring's art agent, and that Dolores had been released from Vittel after Göring made a personal visit to the Wilkinsons' apartment. In 1946, Tudor Wilkinson was placed on the OSS "red flag" list of people and organisations that were involved in the art trade under the Nazis, with the caveat that police reports indicated that he was active in the resistance.
In fact, according to the memoirs of Drue Tartière, the Wilkinsons were both heavily involved in the resistance. Tartière had also been in Vittel and had managed to obtain a release on the false grounds that she was dying of cancer. She went on to help in the smuggling out of occupied territory of at least 42 Allied airmen. She wrote that a short wave radio had been concealed at 18 Quai d'Orleans so that the Resistance could communicate with London, and machine guns were hidden behind the fireplace and elsewhere in the apartment. Wilkinson's secretary, who had been a professor at the Sorbonne, was active in organising sabotage by railway workers.