Court Orders “Flea Market Renoir” Returned To Museum
Marcia Fuqua bought the painting for $7 at a flea market. It turned out to be an authentic Renoir, the value of which could be around $100,000. And it’s going back to its proper owner:
The 1879 Impressionist painting Paysage Bords de Seine, dashed off for his mistress by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir at a riverside restaurant in Paris, has been at the centre of a legal tug-of-war between Marcia “Martha” Fuqua, a former physical education teacher from Lovettsville, Virginia, and the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland.
Judge Leonie Brinkema, in a district court hearing, dismissed Fuqua’s claim of ownership, noting that a property title cannot be transferred if it resulted from a theft.
“The museum has put forth an extensive amount of documentary evidence that the painting was stolen,” Brinkema said, citing a 1951 police report and museum records.
“All the evidence is on the Baltimore museum’s side. You still have no evidence – no evidence – that this wasn’t stolen,” said Brinkema to Fuqua’s attorney before ruling in favour of the museum.
