Fine Arts News

This Egyptian cosmetic box of the cupbearer Kemeni, ca. 1814-1805 B.C., is made of cedar, ebony, ivory and silver.

Metropolitan Musem of Art

Gold, porcelain, glass and steel compose this 18th-century necessaire from France.


This French mechanical table was intended for Madame de Pompadour. The designs depict her many interests, including gardening, painting, music and architecture.

This American worktable was made of satinwood and served as a sewing table and writing desk as well as a vanity.

A 1925 French dressing table shows off the Art Deco style.

The shapely drawers of Raymond Loewy's 1969 valet eliminated the need for hardware.

Ever since there have been puddles of water, human beings have gazed at their reflections.
Our need to primp and preen, whether we live in the Bronze Age or the Space Age, can be seen in a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York called Vanities: The Art of the Dressing Table.

Curator Jane Adlin offers a show that reminds us that while our vanity may ultimately be in vain, the instinct goes back a long way.

An Ancient Conceit

The exhibit begins with an inlaid cedar cosmetic box from Egypt's Middle Kingdom. The box, preserved in a Pharoah's tomb, contained stone ointment jars, perfumes, face paints and other potions. A hand mirror was made not from glass but of polished metal, with a wooden handle decorated with gold.
Found in 1910 by Howard Carter — who would later discover Tutankahemen's tomb — the box is 3,000 years old. Depicted on the drawer is a servant carrying a vessel, "a cupbearer, which was a high title," Adlin says.

Carter found the box in another tomb. "The fact that it was buried in their tomb with them shows how important it was as a means of showing status and their ability to adorn themselves," Adlin says.
The Egyptians weren't alone in their desire to adorn themselves. Through the ages, women have had their cosmetics and must-haves. The French called the ornate boxes that held them "necessaires."
"You would find tiny little perfume flasks, combs, nail files, tiny scissors," Adlin says. "These are clearly meant for the luxury market and were pieces that could have been owned by Madame de Pompadour or royalty, and were carried by their maids and brought out when the madame would ask for a comb."

Beauty, Style And The Unmentionable

These cosmetic boxes were portable. It wasn't till the late 1700s when finally, someone placed the box on a table and drew up a chair.

"By the mid-1800s, the dressing table has become this sort of extraordinary furniture piece," Adlin says. "It's the beginning of the era of the dressing table that we know of."

Madam de Pompadour, the Mistress of Louis XIV, was her era's style-setter. A painting shows her at her vanity table with her mirror, makeup brush, and compact, wearing a low-cut gown. The preening went on for hours. She'd receive visitors as she put on her makeup.

"She had incredibly good taste, and hired only the most important, the most well-known furniture designers," Adlin says. "She was very cultured, and she created amazing furniture."

The exhibit includes exquisite combs, some decorated with precious gems, some made out of rubber, and some made out of ebony and ivory. But they were not all used for beauty alone.

"The interesting thing about the double-sided combs: the wide tooth is to comb hair, and the narrow end is to comb out the lice," Adlin explains.

The Vanities Of Men

What about men? After all, they groom too, especially their beards. They need tables of their own.
The men's vanities in the exhibit aren't really tables. Men stood to shave, so theirs are narrow cabinets with stacks of drawers for their grooming supplies, topped by a mirror. One glossy modern piece by Raymond Loewy was inspired by Space-Age aesthetics and injection-molded plastics.
"This is the men's shaving stand, and as you see, there's no place to sit," Adlin says. "He combined the historical idea of men's dressing tables with new, contemporary materials, the molded plastic. He has no handles, but the grips on the drawers come out of the molded plastic."

The final piece in the exhibit is a table made by a Korean artist in 2013 out of stone and steel —
materials that recall the beauty boxes of antiquity.

Where does this impulse come from, this need to look at ourselves, at least for a time, to begin the day?

"It is inexplicable, it's innate," Adlin says, laughing. "It's something in our gene pool — in our reflecting gene pool."


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Mexican artist Pedro Reyes received 6,700 weapons from the Mexican government, from which he sculpted instruments.

Pedro Reyes says being Mexican is like living in an apartment where an upstairs neighbor has a leaking swimming pool.
"Just what is leaking," says Reyes, "is hundreds of thousands of guns."

He wants people to think about the availability of guns in the United States, and the impact that has in Mexico.

At the University of South Florida in Tampa, he recently held a series of workshops and a performance, using theater to encourage a discussion about guns. It's called "Legislative Theater," a style of performance pioneered in Latin America in the 1960s to influence social change.

In Tampa, Reyes called his project "The Amendment to the Amendment." Specifically, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms. Reyes asks his actors and the audience to consider if there are possible changes that might improve the amendment
Reyes believes art should address social issues like gun violence, even when they're difficult and controversial. "We have to be allowed to ask questions," he says. "If you are not allowed to ask questions, you are not free."

Reyes also addresses the issue of gun violence in another way, by using guns themselves. His first project began in 2007 in the Mexican city of Culiacan. As part of a campaign to curb shootings, the city collected 1,527 guns. He used them to create art.

"Those 1,527 guns were melted and made into the same number of shovels," he says. "So for every gun now, there's a shovel. And with every shovel, we planted a tree."

Now Reyes is working on a new project. It is one that transforms guns into something more musical.
An exhibition of the work is on display at the University of South Florida's Contemporary Art Museum. It's called "Disarm," and consists of guns that have been turned into musical instruments.



Pedro Reyes says he believes art should address social issues like gun violence, even if the issue is difficult or controversial.


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About Hasan Elahi's TEDTalk

When 's name was mistakenly added to the U.S. government's watch list, he fought the assault on his privacy by turning his life inside-out for the world to see.

About Hasan Elahi

If the Feds come after you, you have options: panic, resist or — if you're interdisciplinary American artist Hasan Elahi — flood them with information. In 2002, Elahi was detained because he was suspected of hoarding explosives in a Florida locker. Even though lie detector tests cleared him, Elahi was subjected to six months of questioning.

He decided to turn the tables by constantly calling and emailing the FBI to notify them of his whereabouts. But the effort grew into an including posting minute-by-minute photos and his location through . Elahi is an associate professor of art at the University of Maryland and he has exhibited at Venice Biennale, the Centre Pompidou, and the Hermitage.


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Mario Tama/Getty Images

Joan Mondale, wife of former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale died Monday at a hospice care facility near her home in Minneapolis, Minn. She was 83.

Joan Mondale was given a grand platform when her husband was elected Jimmy Carter's vice president in 1976. And she used it.
The avid arts advocate lobbied Congress and the states for more spending on arts programs, and she traveled frequently to museums, theaters and artists' studios on the administration's behalf. She was so passionate that she earned the nickname "Joan of Art" and, in the process of pushing her cause, transformed the role of the second lady.

As Carter's No. 2, Walter Mondale was seen as a trusted adviser and credited with making the office of the vice president more relevant. It was natural that his wife would do the same for her role. Vice presidential aide Al Eisele once said of his boss: "It was important to him
that Joan not just be the vice president's wife, but his partner."

Joan Mondale, herself an avid potter, died Monday afternoon with her husband, sons Ted and William, and other family members by her side, the family said in a statement. She was 83.

"Joan was greatly loved by many. We will miss her dearly," the former vice president said in a written statement.
The family had announced Sunday that she had gone into hospice care, but declined to discuss her illness.

Walter Mondale, then a Democratic senator from Minnesota, was elected Carter's vice president in 1976. Soon after, Carter named Joan Mondale honorary chairwoman of the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities, and she used that role to push for arts programs on the administration's behalf.

She also showcased the work of prominent artists in the vice presidential residence, including photographer Ansel Adams, sculptor David Smith and painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

"She was exemplary in using the opportunities public service provided to advance the arts and other issues important to her and many Americans," Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, said in a statement released late Monday.

Her enthusiasm for the cause earned widespread praise in the arts community, including from Jim Melchert, director of the visual arts program for the National Endowment for the Arts during Carter's administration.

"Your rare fire has brightened many a day for more people than you may imagine," Melchert wrote to her after the 1980 Carter-Mondale re-election defeat. "What you've done with style and seeming ease will continue illuminating our world for a long time to come."
Joan Mondale would later take her cultural zeal overseas when her husband was named U.S. ambassador to Japan during President Bill Clinton's administration.

During her husband's ambassadorship, Joan Mondale relished the chance to study Japanese art and give dignitaries clay pots she made as gifts. In her 1972 book, "Politics in Art," Joan Mondale framed a connection between the two.

"Sometimes we do not realize how important our participation in politics is. Often we need to be reminded of our duty as citizens," she wrote. "Artists can do just that; they can look at our politicians, our institutions and our problems to help us understand them better."
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar first met Joan Mondale while working as an intern for the vice president in 1980. Klobuchar still has two coffee mugs on her kitchen table that were made by Joan.

"She was always down to earth," Klobuchar said Monday. "She was just as happy going out to rural farms in Elmore (Minnesota) as she was mixing it up at fancy receptions at the ambassador's residence in Japan."

She was born Joan Adams in Eugene, Ore., on Aug. 8, 1930. She and her two sisters moved several times during childhood as their father, a Presbyterian minister, took new assignments. The family finally settled in St. Paul, Minn., where Joan would earn an undergraduate degree at Macalester College.

It was the same liberal arts school that Walter Mondale attended, but they were a few years apart and didn't meet until 1955, when one of Joan's sisters arranged a blind date. Six months later they were engaged, and they married soon after.

She dabbled in Democratic Party politics as a ward chairwoman, though she focused on her family as her husband built a political career that started with state attorney general. Joan tended to a family that would eventually include sons Ted and William and a daughter, Eleanor, who died in 2011 after a long battle with brain cancer.

When Walter Mondale was tapped to fill the Senate seat vacated by Vice President-elect Hubert Humphrey in 1964, the family headed to Washington.

There, Joan Mondale immersed herself in the capital's art scene. She gave weekly tours at the National Gallery of Art and took pottery lessons. Even when her husband was campaigning as Carter's vice president, she tried to keep up with regular ceramics classes.
More recently, she sat on the U.S. Postal Service panel that has a role in selecting stamp designs. She gave up her seat on that committee in 2010.

On Monday, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama noted and praised her many contributions to the arts community.
"Through her contributions to the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities and the Kennedy Center, she passionately advocated for the role of art in the life of our nation and the promotion of understanding worldwide," the Obamas said in a statement.
A service is scheduled for Saturday in Minneapolis.


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Marc Ahr has been painting at the Olympics for the last 22 years.



The thing about Sochi and the surrounding area, and the sidewalks, and the roads, and the land around the train tracks, is the construction. It is everywhere — in places where some might see it and say, "Wait, it doesn't matter. This will not be on TV. No one important is staying here. Just let it go." Miles away from any venue or lodging or Olympic rings.

When I went up to the slopestyle course to interview an athlete, the sound of the music blaring over the loudspeakers was often drowned out by a bulldozer, making noise just behind the stadium seating.



It was in this state of construction, preparation, unfinishedness, that I found Marc Ahr, in the village at the Rosa Khutor extreme sports complex. I saw Marc sketching, looking very hip in black jeans, a gray beanie, and a faux-fur-lined leather jacket. He told me he's been sketching and painting Olympics across the world for 22 years now. He did Lillehammer, Nagano, Salt Lake City, Turin and Vancouver, all without pay. He just shows up and starts drawing. This one, Sochi, felt special to him, as Marc has lived in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the past 10 years. (He's originally from France.)

He was in the midst of finishing up some mountains and adding people to the little village beneath the peaks in his rendering. "I like to add real people to my pictures," he said as he drew. "Real colors, real people."

I asked Marc what he made of all the hoopla surrounding the games, how he dealt with a city still very much under construction just hours before the opening ceremony. I asked what he made of the talk of stray dogs being put down. We talked about his thoughts on the ongoing issue of LGBTQ rights in Russia. Basically, I asked him about all the negative press surrounding these games, which has reached a peak before they've even started.

He answered: "In Russia, everything is impossible, but everything is possible."

For Marc, the games will happen, and they will be good; things are better than they seem, no matter what the press narrative is, or even who wins or loses. "What the hell if they go down the slope one second before, one second after," Marc said. "I don't see the difference. I'm happy to be with people who are happy."

Marc did have some Olympic favorites. He said he most enjoyed drinking with the Japanese. The best transportation was in France. But they all had good and bad, he told me.

And that's the thing for Marc. Throughout all of the criticism of his country ahead of the games, he said every country, everywhere, has good and bad. "Each culture is different," he told me. "Of course we want everything to be our way. If you look through another angle, you will see that some of the things are not as bad as you think."

Marc acknowledged that Sochi — that Russia — still has some work to do. The construction in these parts might not just be physical. Perhaps the bulldozers and plowed-up ground and unfinished buildings are a metaphor. Things in Russia are changing, at least as far as Marc can see. "Each country is getting there," he told me. "Slowly, and slowly."


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Here's what I remember: The day it happened, I was around 8 years old, which puts me in the second grade. It was definitely a Sunday (because we never went anywhere on Saturdays). My dad had decided to take me to the Museum of Modern Art to see some paintings, and I always liked going places with my dad, it didn't matter where, so we arrived at the lobby, bought our tickets, handed them to a man who tore them in half, like at the movies. Then we took the escalator, walked into a big gallery, and as we were moving through — that's when it happened.

Grabbed By a Dead Man

I was walking behind my dad, trying to keep up, when something on the wall kind of flung itself at me, stopped me short, and (for lack of a better term) grabbed my eyes. I came to a full stop.



Stephen Sandoval/Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Lillie P. Bliss Collection

It was a woodland scene, a blur of greens, blues and purples, a tumble of rocks in the foreground, tall pines, branching into a blue sky, breaking up into arabesques. It had no people in it, no girls, nothing I recognized. But with a force that felt like a fist, it jerked my head to it — almost as if it were calling out, "You!" — like it knew me. Like it wanted to pull me to it and tell me something — something personal. But what? I had no idea. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. Furniture, pictures, carpets had always stayed in their place, being, after all, things. But not this thing. It had power.

As I moved closer, it tightened its grip. The boulders in the foreground were dark at the edges, light where the sun peeped through. The upper branches broke free and became little dabs of paint, applied in rhythmic strokes. Paint became tree; tree became paint. I knew nothing about painting, zilch about art history, but the crazy energy coming off that canvass felt like it was addressing some puzzle I already had in my head. I couldn't stop looking. I barely moved. My dad, who had turned around wondering where I'd gone, found me standing a few feet from the image, and when he came up behind me, without turning around, I asked him, "What is this?" And he, without looking for a label, answered, "This ... (and it was the first time I ever heard the name) ... is a Cezanne."



Stephen Sandoval/Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Lillie P. Bliss Collection

How Did Cezanne Do This To Me? I was 8.

To this day I cannot explain what happened to me. The fact that it kept happening — keeps happening, all these (almost) 60 years since — is one of the mysteries of my life. Cezanne produced precarious little worlds that almost, almost, almost lose their balance, but somehow hold themselves together, creating tension, beauty and danger all at once. But why would these crazy dares thrill an 8-year-old? What was it about me that was ready for Cezanne? Because I was so ready. Even in the second grade.

Here's all I can think: that when we are born, we are born with a sort of mood in us, a mood that comes to us through our genes, that will be seasoned by experience, but deep down, it's already there, looking for company, for someone to share itself with, and when we happen on the right piece of music, the right person, or, in this case the right artist, then, with a muscle that is as deep as ourselves, with the force of someone grabbing for a life preserver, we attach. And that's what happened to me that day.

I saw something on a wall that knew what I knew, felt what I felt and wanted me just as badly as I wanted it. When I left the museum I was a different boy. I had been addressed, personally addressed, by an artist whom I could never meet, who didn't speak my language, who had already been dead for 50 years. But I didn't care. His painting pulled me into a conversation I'd apparently been longing to have. It came at me with a force I will never forget and it began very simply. I looked at it. It looked at me, and all it said was, "Me too!" — and Cezanne and I have been talking ever since.


Courtesy of Sara Krulwich



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It's time again for the show that people love to hate: the Whitney Biennial, an overview of American art. Critics often trash it, but as Karen Michel says, this year's showcase has a few surprises.


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After the Rockefeller Center mural was destroyed in 1934, Diego Rivera recreated this version, named Man, Controller of the Universe, which is on display at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. The story of the original mural's creation and destruction is the focus of a Mexican Cultural Institute exhibition in Washington, D.C.

When Mexican artist Diego Rivera was commissioned in 1932 to do a mural in the middle of Manhattan's Rockefeller Center, some might have wondered whether industrialist tycoon John D. Rockefeller Jr. knew what he was getting into.
In 1934, the legendary artist's work was chiseled off the wall.

Now, in Washington, D.C., the Mexican Cultural Institute has mounted a show that tells what happened to Rivera's mural.


Artist Diego Rivera stands with a copy of the mural he painted at Rockefeller Center that was eventually destroyed.

A. Estrada /Courtesy of Museo Frida Kalho

"Man at the Crossroads: Diego Rivera's Mural at Rockefeller Center," is a whodunit tale that also illustrates the tensions between art and politics. Exhibition co-curator Susana Pliego says the Rockefeller family was aware of Rivera's leftist politics when it commissioned the work.

"They tried to have pieces of the best artists at the time," Pliego says. "That was why [they wanted it], because of the artistic and commercial value of his work."

Pliego says Rivera got a three-page contract laying out exactly what management wanted.

Rivera was asked to show a man at the crossroads, looking with uncertainty but with hope and high vision to the choosing of a course leading to a new and better future.

"The theme of Rockefeller Center was 'New Frontiers,' so that was a very spiritual way of looking at development and art," Pliego says. She wonders what made the Rockefellers think that Rivera's vision would be the same as theirs.

A Difference Of Vision

"It was a bad decision for everyone, but it's about politics," co-curator Pablo Ortiz Monasterio says. "When you have to take a position, there is no other way out."

Monasterio says the show illustrates the conflict between the rich, powerful family that hired Rivera and the artist's strong political point of view.

Pliego says the original sketch for the mural — and what Rivera agreed to paint — included three men clasping hands in the middle: a soldier, a worker and peasant. "A spiritual union of all the three elements that Rivera thought man — humanity — was composed of," she says.

"Unfortunately, what he painted was different from the sketch," David Rockefeller Sr. told the Museum of Modern Art in 2012.


An early sketch of the mural shows how it differed from what Diego Rivera painted in Rockefeller Center.

Courtesy of Museo Frida Kahlo

The leftist artist was taunted by those who felt he had sold out, Rivera expert Linda Downs says.

"He was really provoked in New York by leftist organizations and various communist groups that challenged him for painting for Rockefeller," she says.

Then, the World Telegram newspaper ran the headline: "Rivera Paints Scenes of Communist Activity and John D. Jr. Foots the Bill." Pliego says Rivera then decided to add a portrait of communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin to the mural.

"He sent his assistants to find a picture of Lenin because, he said, 'If you want communism, I will paint communism,' " Pliego says.

On top of that, according to David Rockefeller Sr., Rivera added a panel that the family felt was an unflattering portrait of his father.

"The picture of Lenin was on the right-hand side, and on the left, a picture of [my] father drinking martinis with a harlot and various other things that were unflattering to the family and clearly inappropriate to have as the center of Rockefeller Center," he said.

"He had these two options," Monasterio says. "He could erase that and solve the problem, but if he didn't, then that would be a scandal; that would be propaganda. So he himself was at the crossroads again."

Rivera had persuaded his patrons to let him paint a fresco — paint on wet plaster instead of on canvas. That meant the work couldn't be moved. After a flurry of letters asking Rivera to replace Lenin and the artist's declaration that he'd rather see the work destroyed than mutilated, Rivera was fired and the work was eventually chiseled off.

A Missing Piece Of History

Downs says the piece would have been stunning had it survived.
"He had this vision of the importance of technology in the future and the hope that there would be a coming together of workers and industrialists and businessmen to further mankind in general," Downs says. "It was a very hopeful mural."
Pliego says the exhibition illustrates a key question: Who owns a work of art?
"For example, like Diego said in a letter," she says, "'If someone buys the Sistine Chapel, does he have the authority to destroy it?' "

The exhibition, "Man at the Crossroads: Diego Rivera's Mural at Rockefeller Center," reconstructs the story of the mural through reproductions of documents, letters, photographs and Rivera's sketches. It will be on display at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., through May 17.


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'Chineasy' Animal Characters

These Chineasy illustrations by graphic designer Noma Bar feature Chinese characters in both the traditional (mainly used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) and simplified (mainly used in mainland China) writing styles. If the caption does not specify the style, the character's traditional and simplified forms are the same.



Courtesy of Harper Design

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Growing up in Taiwan, ShaoLan Hsueh stuck out.

She liked writing in Chinese.
"I know all the children hated it, but I was a bit odd in that I loved writing Chinese characters," says Hsueh, the daughter of a Chinese calligrapher.


ShaoLan Hsueh worked with illustrators to develop pictograms that help readers learn Chinese characters.

Now living in London, she later discovered that the love she had for Chinese language felt like "torture" to her two British-born children. "I found it really challenging to try to convince them that it's really cool to read Chinese," she said. "No one in their environment would be interested or have contact with Chinese-speaking people."

Her solution is a system that helps readers learn Chinese characters through cute illustrations. The pictograms, developed with a team of visual designers, are now published in a new book called Chineasy.

There are tens of thousands of Chinese characters, but learning the 400-plus characters featured in the book is enough to read at a basic level, according to Hsueh, who also presented her language learning system at a .

She adds that while learning to read may be challenging to Chinese-language learners, it can provide a deeper understanding of Chinese culture. For example, she points to the character for "female"

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Renoir's On the Shore of the Seine returns to the Baltimore Museum of Art more than 60 years after its theft. Rumor has it Renoir painted the tiny piece on a linen napkin for his mistress. It was stolen from the museum in 1951 and resurfaced in 2012 when a woman tried to sell it, claiming she had bought it at a flea market.

Renoir's On the Shore of the Seine returns to the Baltimore Museum of Art more than 60 years after its theft. Rumor has it Renoir painted the tiny piece on a linen napkin for his mistress. It was stolen from the museum in 1951 and resurfaced in 2012 when a woman tried to sell it, claiming she had bought it at a flea market.

It has the makings of a great mystery: Artwork stolen from a prominent museum, plus the FBI, a beautiful woman and an intrepid reporter. But this isn't fiction, it's a strange, true tale of how a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir has now safely returned home to Baltimore.

At first it was known as the Renoir found at a West Virginia flea market — a woman took the painting to an auction house where they concluded that it was, indeed, On the Shore of the Seine — a Renoir that had been purchased in Paris in 1925 by American art collectors Herbert and Saidie May. In a press release, the auction house said it could sell for up to $100,000.

The flea market story intrigued Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira. He knew that Saidie May was a major donor to the Baltimore Museum of Art, but when he called the BMA, they told him they had no record of the painting. Shapira went to the museum to look through May's papers anyway, just days before the auction opened.

"I found some documents showing that the museum had actually owned this painting and then the museum discovered documents on its own showing that the staff back in the 1950s had actually reported the painting stolen," Shapira says.

It was stolen — possibly in the middle of the night — in November, 1951. Once the Baltimore Museum of Art confirmed the Renoir belonged to them, they immediately contacted the auction house. The auction house contacted the FBI, and the FBI seized the painting.
But that's not all Shapira discovered. His first clue something was amiss in the flea market story was a phone chat he had with the woman's brother.

"He said something along the lines of: 'Oh, yeah, that painting had been in my mother's house for years,'" Shapira says.

It turns out their mother, Marcia Fouquet, was an artist: She "was a painter herself who went to art college in Baltimore at the time of the painting's theft," Shapira says. She was a beautiful woman "who had a certain charm over men."

Fouquet lived in a house in Fairfax, Va. She rented out some of the rooms, and Shapira tracked down some of her former tenants. "Many of them told me in interviews they remember seeing this Renoir hanging in her house for decades," he says.

“ The painting became sort of a prodigal child. No matter how many children you have — and we have 90,000 in this institution — you feel for the one that is lost. So to be able to have it come home is just incredibly meaningful for us.

- Doreen Bolger, director of the Baltimore Museum of Art

But — as far as Shapira could tell — Fouquet never told anyone how she got it. She died at age 85 in September 2013.The case ended up in court — with the daughter still claiming she bought the painting at a flea market so it belonged to her, and the Baltimore Museum showing evidence of ownership of the stolen Renoir. The judge ruled in the museum's favor. After more than 60 years, the Renoir was returned.

On the Shore of the Seine is tiny, smaller than a sheet of paper. But the miniature landscape — of a sailboat in the distance — is bursting with color. The story goes that Renoir painted it around 1879 on a linen napkin — for his lover. With so much international interest, the painting is getting quite a homecoming.

"The painting became sort of a prodigal child," says Doreen Bolger, director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. "No matter how many children you have — and we have 90,000 in this institution — you feel for the one that is lost. So to be able to have it come home is just incredibly meaningful for us.
The exhibition "The Renoir Returns" opens to the public on Sunday. The mystery of who stole the painting in 1951 remains unsolved. As for Marcia Fouquet's daughter, she says she will not appeal the judge's ruling.


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