Hitler's Art Under Hammer

As a work of art, it's hardly the stuff of genius. Somewhere between caricature and faux-naïf portraiture, it's a watercolour study of an interwar German postman - replete with drooping moustache. In this instance, however, artistic merit is hardly the issue: the picture was painted by Adolf Hitler while he killed time after the doomed Munich Putsch of 1923. And it sold this week for £5,200. In Cornwall. In 1935, a group of his aides was given the job of recovering as many of Hitler's paintings as possible, which were duly stored in tunnels below the Platterhof Hotel, close to Hitler's Alpine retreat at Berchtesgarden. At the end of the war, they were seized by the American army. For the full story - click the title Irish Art