Baltimore Museum Renoir Art Theft Casualty in Bag, Box, Home or Shed?

Summary: A sister reports buying the Baltimore Museum Renoir art theft casualty at a West Virginia flea market, but her brother recalls it being with their mother.

France's Seine River flowing west of Paris, between Bougival and Chatou, inspired Renoir's diminutive On the Shore of the Seine, stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951 and returned to the museum in 2014; Sunday, April 12, 2015, 19:59: Jean-Marie Hullot (Jmhullot), CC BY 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acquisition of the six-decade absent Baltimore Museum Renoir art theft casualty Jan. 31, 2014, adds closure without answers to the perpetrator's identity, means, motives and opportunities and to the Seine riverscape's hideaways.

The geometric, moisture-tolerant weave of the linen damask that On the Shore of the Seine (Paysage Bords de Seine) beautifies betokened minimal breakdown and minor restoration. Its cleanliness, despite a disturbed corner and some dustiness, convoked optimal conservation away from sunlight at 50 percent humidity and 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21.11 degrees Celsius). It derived from one scenario divulged by a self-described eyewitness to the artwork's hideaway in plain sight and another by a self-proclaimed good-faith buyer and possessor.

A box, a garbage bag, a shed and the walls of a house emerged as whereabouts after the Baltimore Museum Renoir art theft Nov. 16-17, 1951.

Initially thought to be a lost Renoir, the diminutive painting scheduled for The Potomack Company's Saturday, Sep. 29, 2012, auction turned out to be a stolen Renoir: The Potomack Company, via The Potomack Company press release of Sep. 5, 2012

The riverscape from 1879 fell onto The Potomack Company auction block in Alexandria, Virginia, following authenticity by Bernheim-Jeune art gallery in Paris, France, second known title-holder.

The internet guards the press release generated Sept. 15, 2012, about the auction Sept. 29, 2012, and the bidding price of $75,000 to $100,000 for bidders. It has newspaper coverage hyping the self-named Renoir Girl's happening in 2009 upon a box holding a Paul Bunyan doll, a plastic cow and the riverscape. It indicates the riverscape's isolation within a white bag in one Harpers Ferry flea market-destined box on a table in an unheated shed with cracked windowpanes.

Washington Post reporter Ira Shapira's investigations jumpstarted the auction's cancellation, the possessor's exposure and the painting's seizure 61 years after the Baltimore Museum Renoir art theft.

The brush strokes, colors, light and Seine subject of an oil on linen damask riverscape that The Potomack Company almost auctioned in 2012 reminded the auction gallery's fine arts specialist, Anne Norton Craner, of another 1879 oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Landscape at Wargemont; Toledo Museum of Art, Lucas County, northwestern Ohio: Art Gallery ErgsArt - by ErgSap (Art Gallery ErgsArt), Public Domain, via Flickr

Knowledge of Saidie Adler May (Feb. 18, 1879-May 27, 1951), as Baltimore Museum of Art benefactress and wife of a legal riverscape title-holder, kindled Shapira's investigations.

Shapira's investigations Sept. 25, 2012, in the museum library led to the painting's seizure, as stolen artwork, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Sept. 28, 2012. The FBI moves motivated Renoir Girl to materialize as Marcia Martha Fuqua, Marcia Mae Fuqua's (June 12, 1928-Sept. 9, 2013) daughter and Owen Maddox Fuqua's sister. It necessitated a United States Eastern District Court ruling on legal ownership and nourished incompatible memories by Fuqua, her brother and her brother's girlfriend Jamie Romantic.

Martha Fuqua's statements offered her mother first observing the riverscape between 2009 and 2012, almost 58 to 61 years after the Baltimore Museum Renoir art theft.

U.S. District Court Judge Leonie M. Brinkema issued her decision concerning ownership of Renoir's On the Shore of the Seine from the Albert V. Bryan Courthouse in Alexandria, northern Virginia; Saturday, March 10, 2012, 15:48:05: Tim Evanson, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Fuqua's brother placed the 8.75- by 12- by 2.25-inch (22.22- by 30.48- by 5.72-centimeter) Renoir (Feb. 25, 1841-Dec. 3, 1919) "in my mother's house for years." His veracity qualified Fuqua's mother, Goucher College art studio graduate in 1952 and Maryland Institute College of Arts fine arts graduate in 1957, as good-faith possessor.

Good-faith possession reappears in the kitchen wall-hanging casualty of the Norman Rockwell Lazybones art theft June 30, 1976, until relocation March 29-31, 2017, to legal title-holders. The closed Renoir case and the Rockwell case's closure three years later share absence of post-recovery punishment, minimum of post-retrieval restoration and notification through public ceremony.

The closed Baltimore Museum Renoir art theft case tells the open Houston Renoir art theft case to throw a big party whenever the prodigal turns up.

Will Renoir's portrait of Madeleine (right) stolen from a private residence in Houston in 2011 resurface via a good faith possessor, such as Norman Rockwell's "Lazybones" (left), recovered after 41 missing years, or such as Renoir's On the Shore of the Seine, returned to the Baltimore Museum of Art after over 62 missing years?: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Public Domain, via FBI

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

France's Seine River flowing west of Paris, between Bougival and Chatou, inspired Renoir's diminutive On the Shore of the Seine, stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951 and returned to the museum in 2014; Sunday, April 12, 2015, 19:59: Jean-Marie Hullot (Jmhullot), CC BY 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ile_de_la_Loge,_Bougival,_aerial_view.jpg

Initially thought to be a lost Renoir, the diminutive painting scheduled for The Potomack Company's Saturday, Sep. 29, 2012, auction turned out to be a stolen Renoir: The Potomack Company, via The Potomack Company press release of Sep. 5, 2012, @ http://www.potomackcompany.com/press/current/020)%20Lost%20Renoir%20Painting%20at%20Potomack%20Company%20September%2029%20Auction.pdf

The brush strokes, colors, light and Seine subject of an oil on linen damask riverscape that The Potomack Company almost auctioned in 2012 reminded the auction gallery's fine arts specialist, Anne Norton Craner, of another 1879 oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Landscape at Wargemont; Toledo Museum of Art, Lucas County, northwestern Ohio: Art Gallery ErgsArt - by ErgSap (Art Gallery ErgsArt), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/ergsart/22178491528/

U.S. District Court Judge Leonie M. Brinkema issued her decision concerning ownership of Renoir's On the Shore of the Seine from the Albert V. Bryan Courthouse in Alexandria, northern Virginia; Saturday, March 10, 2012, 15:48:05: Tim Evanson, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/timevanson/6974619803/

Will Renoir's portrait of Madeleine (right) stolen from a private residence in Houston in 2011 resurface via a good faith possessor, such as Norman Rockwell's "Lazybones" (left), recovered after 41 missing years, or such as Renoir's On the Shore of the Seine, returned to the Baltimore Museum of Art after over 62 missing years?: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Public Domain, via FBI
"Lazybones" via FBI @ https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/philadelphia/news/press-releases/fbi-seeks-missing-norman-rockwell-painting-stolen-40-years-ago-today
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Public Domain, via FBI
"Madeleine" via FBI @ https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/new-top-ten-art-crime

For further information:

Marriner, Derdriu. 30 June 2017. "Norman Rockwell Painting Lazybones Art Theft Anniversary: Lost No More." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2017/06/norman-rockwell-painting-lazybones-art.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 8 September 2017. "Renoir Oil Painting Theft in Houston, Texas Unsolved From Sept. 8, 2011." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2017/09/renoir-oil-painting-theft-in-houston.html

Paul C. Kopp @marketshakers. 21 January 2014. "Renoir bought for $7 at W. Virginia flea market ordered returned to museum." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/marketshakers/status/425761068401451009