[MSN] Art historian Erin Culbreth of The Art Loss Register finds stolen $80, 000 painting at Palm Beach fair.

[MSN]

South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Expert finds stolen $80,000 painting at Palm Beach fair

By Erika Pesantes

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

February 27, 2008

A stolen painting recovered at the Palm Beach-America's International Fine
Art & Antique Fair is due back in the hands of its rightful owner Monday.

Art historian Erin Culbreth of The Art Loss Register saw the 101-year-old
oil painting by J. Carroll Beckwith during a check of pieces in the fair
before it opened earlier this month at the Palm Beach County Convention
Center in West Palm Beach.

The international organization, with offices in Manhattan, lists about
200,000 stolen and missing artworks worldwide in its databases.

The painting, titled Sleep, was reported missing in 1995 by the Buffalo
Club. The New York club would not comment Tuesday on its recovery.

The painting is at the Register's Manhattan office until Monday, said Chris
Marinello, executive director and general counsel for The Art Loss Register.
Then it goes back to the Buffalo Club.

Anne Frances Moore Fine Art Services purchased the artwork in 2005 for
$6,000 from auctioneer Doyle New York, Marinello said. Anne Frances Moore
had an $80,000 price tag on the painting for the fair, but it was flagged
and pulled before opening day on Feb. 1.

"It's a phenomenal work and everyone that had seen it said they wanted to
buy it," Marinello said.

The 17-by-21-inch painting shows a young slumbering woman with red lips and
cascading curls. Beckwith was a significant Missouri-born artist who drew
influences from Europe and worked alongside John Singer Sargent. His works
have been showcased at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of
Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The fair hired the Register to cross-check about 2,000 fine arts and
antiquities against ones in its databases. The fair featured about 400,000
pieces of art from galleries in more than a dozen countries. A vetting
committee of museum curators, art scholars and experts also verified the
authenticity of the art.

"It's an important part of the service we offer to buyers who come to the
fair," its director, Michael Mezzatesta, said. "I'm just happy that we were
able to help recover the painting and see it get back to its rightful
owner."

The Register lists 259 missing or stolen art pieces from Florida. It has
worked on 80 cases in South Florida, including last month's theft of the
painting Our Lady of Czestochowa from Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in
West Palm Beach. That painting remains missing.

Sleep is the first stolen painting that has shown up at the Palm
Beach-America's International Fine Art & Antique Fair since its inception 12
years ago, said Gary Libby, chairman of its vetting committee and director
emeritus of the Daytona Museum of Arts & Sciences. This find underscores how
important it is for fair officials to scrutinize the authenticity of
artworks, he said.

"Because imagine if someone buys a $100,000 painting and in three months
there's a knock on the door," Libby said. "The whole thing [could be] a
nightmare of problems."

Erika Pesantes can be reached at epesantes at sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6602.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/