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A Virginia woman claiming to have purchased Renoir painting for $7 at a flea market has been unmasked and is now under FBI investigation after it emerged the painting was stolen in 1951. Marcia 'Martha' Fuqua from Loudon County, Virginia, had tried to remain anonymous and said she purchased the painting simply for its frame and had no special ‘understanding of art.’ But it has now emerged that the painting 'On the Shore of The Seine' was reported stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951, according to the Washington Post. The FBI seized the painting late last year...

(Newser) – The flea market box lot was less than $50, and the buyer picked it up mostly for the Paul Bunyan doll it contained. But it turns out the box lot also contained an original painting by Renoir that could fetch up to $100,000 in an auction at the end of the month, reports the New York Times. The 5.5-inch-by-9-inch painting of the Seine riverside is believed to be Renoir's Paysage Bords de Seine. It was bought from a French gallery in 1925 and later sold to a Maryland collector, but art historians aren't sure when or how it...

to Baltimore Museum where it was stolen more than 60 YEARS agoThe 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...