Once-stolen Renoir piece to return to Baltimore Museum of Art
Virginia woman says she bought piece at flea market
Officials at the Baltimore Museum of Art are celebrating a huge victory Friday over a Renoir painting stolen decades ago.
Mobile users tap here to watch video
After a bitter battle over a valuable impressionist painting, the museum has been named the rightful owners of the painting by a federal judge.
It started 2009 when a Virginia woman named Martha Fuqua said she bought the Renoir piece at a flea market -- a claim her own brother disputed.
"I'm ecstatic because the truth came out and it went back to where it belongs," said Fuqua's brother, Owen "Matt" Fuqua.
The BMA said the painting was actually stolen from its collection in November 1951. After two years of sorting through claims and arguments, the court is ordering the 1879 impressionist landscape painting sent back to Baltimore.
"It's a little bit like the return of the prodigal son. We have so many masterpieces here in the museum but for this one to come home after such a long absence, it's like welcoming someone back into your family," said Doreen Bolger, director of the BMA.
The painting is kind of the Renoir equivalent of a doodle on a cocktail napkin. As the story goes, he painted it on the linen napkin of a riverside restaurant for his mistress.
Worth nearly six figures now, Martha Fuqua had put it up for auction until the FBI moved in and seized it in 2012 as a judge determined the rightful owner.
"The principle of law in the Commonwealth of Virginia is that you cannot take good title from a thief, even if you are a bona fide purchaser," said Marla Diaz, attorney for the BMA.
The judge didn't exactly call Martha Fuqua a thief or a liar, but just said there was "overwhelming evidence" the painting was nipped from the BMA more than 60 years ago.
"Now we have the joy in March of putting the Renoir on view in our galleries and celebrating its homecoming," Bolger said.
In a statement released Friday the BMA said: "The Baltimore Museum of Art is pleased that the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia has awarded ownership of the stolen Renoir painting, On the Shore of the Seine, to the Museum.
"Pending an appeal, we look forward to celebrating the painting’s homecoming with a special installation in the galleries in late March."