Community Corner

Who Owns Renoir Painting Purchased for $7 at Virginia Flea Market?

Who owns a small Renoir painting purchased at a flea market for $7? Is it the woman who bought the unsigned piece at the sale or the Baltimore Museum of Art, which reported the piece stolen 50 years ago?

A federal court judge urged the parties involved in a 15-month dispute over who owns a Renoir painting that was stolen in 1951 from the Baltimore Museum of Art to consider settling rather than continue their court battle, according to the Baltimore Sun.

The miniature landscape was part of a box of odds and ends in a rural flea market that was purchased by a Virginia woman in 2009 without knowing the value of the unsigned artwork. Since then, its ownership has been in question, the newspaper reported.

The Virginia auction house Potomack Company believes the landscape to be Renoir’s “Paysage Bords de Seine,” which it values between $75,000 and $100,000, says the Huffington Post.

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If experts are correct, the painting arrived in the U.S. by way of Herbert May, a Renoir collector whose wife, Sadie, was a major benefactor to the Baltimore Museum of Art, says the Huffington Post. May is the last known owner of “Paysage Bords de Seine,” which he purchased from the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris. It has not been seen since 1926.

Attorneys for the woman who found the painting, Marcia Fuqua, 51, of Lovettsville, Va., have submitted a proposed settlement to the museum, the Sun said. A federal judge said litigation costs could quickly surpass a settlement sum.

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"If the museum really wants the painting," Judge Leonie Brinkema said in the newspaper story, "offering a settlement might make sense."


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