Lost or Stolen works of Art Part 3
1950’s
A tiny Renoir that was stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art, in November 1951, reappeared in 2014.
A woman took the painting to an auction house where they concluded that it was, On the Shore of the Seine, a Renoir that could sell for up to $100,000. She claimed she had bought the painting at a West Virginia flea market.
The case ended up in court with the woman still claiming she bought the painting at a flea market, so it belonged to her.
The Baltimore Museum showed evidence of ownership of the stolen Renoir and the judge ruled in the museum’s favor.
It turned out the woman’s mother, Marcia Fouquet, had the painting hanging in her house for many years before her death in 2013. It was never established how she came by it, and the mystery of who stole the painting in 1951 remains unsolved.
1960’s
In 1961, bus driver Kempton Bunton stole Goya’s Duke of Wellington from a wall in the of the National Gallery after climbing in through a toilet window.
The work had received high-profile coverage weeks earlier after an American collector was due to buy it for $392,000. Such was the public outrage that the government frantically assembled enough money to stop the work going abroad.
Bunton demanded a ransom for the same amount, claiming he wanted to use it to buy TV licenses for the poor. Four years later he returned the painting voluntarily.
