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Stolen from an airport more than 22 years ago, a rare First World War painting by a major Canadian Impressionist has resurfaced in Toronto, and detectives are trying to figure out where it has been.
In the spring of 1988, an art dealer in Calgary shipped Château Liévin, a roughly 14-by-17-centimetre oil by James Wilson Morrice, to a dealer in Toronto by airplane. However, the work never arrived, and investigators believe it was lifted at Pearson International Airport.
Last summer, a woman showed up at high-end galleries and auction houses on Hazelton Avenue with the piece, asking for an appraisal. Three of them contacted Lucie Dorais, an Ottawa-based expert on the artist who has compiled a catalogue of his work.
“I recognized it right away from the description,” she said. “For the knowledge of the artist, it’s an important find.”
She used an inscription on the back, scrawled in pencil in the artist’s hand, to confirm that the painting the auction houses had seen was the one that vanished more than two decades earlier.
One auction house, Bonhams, informed police. Investigators cleared the woman who brought the painting in (Ms. Dorais said she had apparently received it from her ex-husband, an airline employee), but have not been able to figure out who stole it, prompting them to go public on Wednesday.
The Montreal-born Mr. Morrice created Château Liévin, which depicts a soldier standing before the gate to a blasted-out French mansion, while he was doing paintings of the war to hang in Parliament.
The work was still in the artist’s possession at his death in 1924, and wound up with his Montreal executors. It is unclear where it was before it ended up in Calgary.
“We do get art thefts in Canada, but not nearly as many as you get somewhere else in the world,” said Jack Kerr-Wilson of Bonhams. “It’s great when [a painting] re-emerges after a quarter of a century.”
Detective Constable James Hiscox said the painting’s ownership would likely have to be determined by the courts. Its appraised value is $30,000, but it could sell for much more than that. Another of Mr. Morrice’s wartime pieces sold at auction in November, 2009, for more than $200,000.
ADRIAN MORROW |
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