Painting Finds Rightful Home with Help of Appraiser

Fellow appraiser Peter Kostoulakos sent me this article about a missing painting and research conducted to bring it back to its original owners.  It is a situation where after a loan for exhibition, the painting was not returned, and then forgotten for a time.  It is also a story where it appears all involved wanted to do the right thing and get the painting back to the proper owners.

The Lowell Sun article documents the lost and found story a missing portrait by Lowell artist Elizabeth Morse Walsh.

The Lowell Sun reports

The museum was in the midst of administrative turmoil, transitioning to a new executive director. The missing portrait fell through the cracks, a cold case left undisturbed for more than two decades.

"Over the last couple of years we have been sorting though our inventory and discovered this painting was missing," said Whistler House President Sara Bogosian.

Fine-art consultant Peter Kostoulakos began researching the painting and found the loan agreement, signed by Judith Hayden, allowing the portrait to hang at the Barnes House from November 1989 to February 1990.

Steve Stowell, administrator of the Lowell Historic Board, provided Kostoulakos with information regarding the house and its ownership, setting him on the trail to Pennington.

Bogosian said watching Kostoulakos unravel the mystery was like reading a good book, anticipating what the next page would bring.

He would send her an email almost daily containing new tidbits, a crumb trail leading back to Henry.

Pennington was taken aback when he received a voicemail from Kostoulakos inquiring about the painting at the beginning of April.

"I thought it was a scam, he was some kind of con artist," he said. "But I know everybody who has gone through my house in 12 years, so I could not figure out how he would know about the painting."

Pennington called Whistler House Executive Director Michael Lally to confirm Kostoulakos' identity. Lally described the painting, its size, its catalogue number, the exact location of artist Walsh's signature.

"I could have told the guy to jump off a bridge and be done with it, but I knew it wasn't mine," Pennington said.

Then Pennington learned the painting was considered "stolen."

He feared what was coming next. Maybe because he has seen too many art-heist movies. Maybe because he had worked at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum shortly after its famous heist. Would his house suddenly be surrounded by Lowell police cruisers, their blue lights dancing along his windowpanes?

On April 17 at 1 p.m., Pennington met with Kostoulakos, Bogosian and Lally at Starbucks on Drum Hill in Chelmsford. They sipped coffee and talked art, discovering they had a lot in common. By the end, Pennington agreed to return Henry, of whom he had taken very good care, to the museum. There was one condition.

"I did not want Henry to end up stored away in a warehouse," he said.

On April 28, the Whistler House trio drove to Belvidere to bring Henry back to his Acre home on Worthern Street, the birthplace of renowned artist James McNeill Whistler (you may know his mother).

Source: The Lowell Sun