Flea-market Renoir returns to museum after mysterious disappearance

BALTIMORE From the moment it was created in 1879, a tiny landscape of the River Seine by Pierre-Auguste Renoir has been characterized by a tangled weave of embellishments, layers and knots.

When the Impressionist master sat down to dash off a quick oil sketch of the river, he picked up not the usual piece of canvas, but museum experts confirmed last week a linen napkin from his mistress that had an elaborate geometric pattern in which threads twist above, below and around one another.

Our textile curator, Anita Jones, spent a lot of time looking at the painting under a high-powered microscope, Katy Rothkopf, the Baltimore Museum of Arts senior curator of European painting and sculpture, said at the preview of a new exhibit, The Renoir Returns, which opens Sunday.

The fabric is a type of linen damask that in the late 19th century was used for table linens, Rothkopf said. It was unusual for painters to use this type of fabric, but it turned out to be a good choice. Linen increases in strength when wet and is smoother than wool or cotton.

But as elaborate as the fabrics geometric structure is, its virtually a model of simplicity when compared to the 135-year-old artworks past.

The FBI said Thursday that the investigation into the theft of Paysage Bord du Seine (On the Shore of the Seine) from the museum in 1951 has been closed. After interviewing dozens of witnesses over nearly 18 months, there wasnt sufficient evidence to arrest anyone either for stealing the artwork or for intentionally possessing stolen property, Special Agent Gregg Horner said.

Crowds expected

The 5-by-9 inch paintings story is expected to draw throngs of visitors to the museum this weekend when the Renoir goes on display for the first time in more than six decades, as part of an exhibition drawn from the collection of the paintings donor, Baltimore heiress and philanthropist Saidie May, who bought the artwork from a Paris gallery in 1925 and later bequeathed it to the museum.

The twice-divorced May was a free spirit, an amateur artist and a cousin of the art collectors Etta and Claribel Cone. (Two paintings by May also are on display in the exhibit, which also includes works by Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock and Paul Klee.) It was May who put up the money that enabled the artists Marc Chagall and Andr Masson to flee from Nazi-occupied France during World War II and to escape to America with their families.

More recently, the Renoir was in the possession of a Virginia driving instructor named Marcia Martha Fuqua. She made headlines worldwide in September 2012 when she said shed bought a Renoir painting at the Harpers Ferry Flea Market as part of a box of odds and ends costing $7 without knowing the artworks true value.

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Flea-market Renoir returns to museum after mysterious disappearance