André Derain’s Valley of the Lot at Vers was removed from the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. In 1939, The Museum of Modern Art purchased the painting from Karl Buchholz, one of four art dealers acting on behalf of the German Government, and his partner Curt Valentin, a German-Jewish immigrant who had settled in New York after fleeing Germany. Feeling fortunate at having acquired the painting, MoMA director Alfred H. Barr, Jr. stressed the continuity of the work within the French tradition, stating that "the Derain painting, far from being radical, is a severely disciplined landscape in a modern classical style derived from Cézanne and Poussin."