The Boston-based artwork collector and beginner sleuth Cliff Schorer has almost cracked a 40-year-old artwork heist with a easy Google search.
In 1978, 12 work have been stolen from the house of Robert Stoddard, a trustee of the Worcester Artwork Museum in Massachussetts, together with a piece by Auguste Renoir, a J.M.W. Turner watercolour and a scenic Seventeenth-century portray, Winter Panorama with Skater and Different Figures (1630s), by Dutch painter Henrick Avercamp. Solely three of the 12 works, valued collectively at round $10m, have been recovered thus far, however Schorer’s latest investigation might assist add to that tally within the very close to future, Boston Journal reviews.
Schorer, a former board president of the Worcester Artwork Museum, took a particular curiosity on this chilly case as a result of a number of of the stolen works had been promised to the establishment previous to Stoddard’s demise in 1984. Final yr, when Schorer performed a reverse Google Picture search on the lacking Avercamp portray, he was stunned to discover a high-resolution replica of the picture printed on a throw pillow by means of Pixels.com, an on-demand art-merchandise website. Schorer decided that the picture was too sharp to have been taken earlier than 1978, traced the picture’s metadata and uncovered a 2012 copyright owned by a vendor he knew in New York.
After making contact with the vendor, Schorer found that the portray in query had been bought at a European artwork honest in 1995, attributed to Hendrick Avercamp’s much less illustrious nephew, Barent Avercamp. Finally, Schorer tracked down the niece of the gallerist who bought the portray at that honest, studying the names of the deceased Dutch couple who had bought the stolen portray, in addition to its value, $200,000—pennies in comparison with what it will have been value with Hendrick’s title connected.
Schorer is making an attempt to make contact with the Dutch consumers’ heirs and has despatched a number of letters on behalf of the Worcester Artwork Museum advocating for an amicable return. If the heirs refuse or don’t reply, the case might be handed over to Dutch police.
