Posted on 01/11/2014 12:58:24 PM PST by Uncle Chip
to Baltimore Museum where it was stolen more than 60 YEARS ago
The story began with one of those improbable tales of an artistic masterpiece uncovered at a flea market.
It concluded Friday, the painting still a masterpiece but the story about the flea market all the more improbable.
A federal judge has awarded ownership of a disputed Renoir painting to a Baltimore museum, citing 'overwhelming evidence' that the painting had been stolen from the museum more than 60 years ago.
The judge's decision rejected the claims of a Virginia woman, Marcia 'Martha' Fuqua, who maintained that she bought the painting at a flea market for $7, even as others, including her own brother, disputed her story....
As it turned out, Fuqua's mother, who used the name Marcia Fouquet, was an artist who specialized in reproducing paintings from Renoir and other masters, and who had extensive links to Baltimore's art community in the 1950s.
In addition, Fuqua's brother, Owen 'Matt' Fuqua, told a Washington Post reporter that he had seen the painting in the family home numerous times, well before his sister supposedly bought it in 2009, though Matt Fuqua changed his story several times subsequently....
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Hmmm... an interesting question.
As a former (tax) accountant, I wonder about the accounting involved in the original loss. The insurance company paid the museum for the loss and, in return, created an asset on their books, the asset being the value of the rights to the stolen artwork. Over time, I suppose the insurance company would depreciate that value since the odds of recovering the stolen artwork would decrease over time. Still, there should be some residual value.
After 60 years, the residual value of the stolen artwork would be negligible, but they could not write it down to zero. So... I suppose donating the negligible rights back to the museum could be a publicity thing. Or, maybe more likely, an incentive for the museum company to keep insuring with them. And that would allow the insurance company to clean up their books.
It'd be interesting to find out how often this occurs in the insurance industry. I'm not even sure what to google to discover that!
Is there a list of what sources don’t belong in the news forum, for future reference?
That's going to leave a mark.
Exactly. Let's just shut the whole News Forum down and post everything under Gossip. ;-)
I have two newspapers that are apps on my I-phone. One is my local paper and the other is The Daily Mail.
If the Daily Mail isn’t considered a reliable news source, then what would you call the New York Times?
BBC's six-year cover-up of secret 'green propaganda' training for top executives
Daily Mail is awesomely good!
I enjoy a lot of the impressionist and fauve era paintings, but this piece here looks like a leftover palette after working on some other painting. This is what happens when I wipe my oil, and turpentine soaked brushes off on a paper Kleenex. One man’s junque is another man’s ambrosia, right?
agree, when something big happens here in the US (or anywhere else), the DM is now one of the sites I check. Far more info given than from the Obama-Press-Corp.
I never would have believed that even Pravda would have more info than the MSM-Obama-Press-Corp. What a topsy turvy world?
Whoever has legal title to it. That could well be the insurance company. Either way, she should have known better to fight it when she clearly had no title. Maybe she could sue her attorney for malpractice.
That must explain why the painting is no larger than a napkin.
Renoir must have been using a napkin it to clean his brushes and then it just appeared out of nowhere -- voila!!! a Renoir!!!.
That is an unbelievable article that needs to be posted in the NEWS FORUM.
What’s the problem with Daily Mail posts? Some stories may be “crap”, whatever that means but they have stories that lead to info that is hard to find at U.S. websites.
That might not change much. To an increasing extent I'm relying upon ping lists rather than noticing which forum an article is under.
As I and others have noted up-thread, the issue is not that DM has "crap" articles (every paper does), it's that FReepers post so many of the crap articles that it's given the Mod the impression that DM only has crap.
The solution is for FReepers to post fewer articles in the "News" forums that, while technically "news", have little relevance to conservatism.
I think most folks are smart enough to figure out how they want to receive content here on FR. Whether it's ping lists, looking only at certain groups, or searching for posts by fellow Freepers who have a history of posting or replying to interesting articles themselves.
As long as YOU are the one choosing what you see, rather than someone else attempting to make that choice for you, it's all good. I've had people add me to their ping lists without my permission or consent who've then gotten rather hostile after I've asked them to remove me, as I had not ASKED to be on their ping list. They get quite "snippy" and act as if they were doing me a favor when in fact they're distracting from how I prefer to receive content here on FR. Thankfully that's happened only about a handful of times since I've been on FR dating back to 1998.
Yes, and you do occasionally see this happen in the real world. It's not logic so much as what the law requires.
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