From Messy Nessy Chic, May 12:
We love a good story about a missing painting missing. This one starts in Christmas of 2008: a Hungarian art historian is at home with his young daughter Lola, watching the popular children’s film Stuart Little, when he notices a painting in the background that shakes him up so much, he almost drops his daughter from his lap. It appears to be a missing masterpiece by the Hungarian avant-garde painter Róbert Berény: Sleeping Lady with Black Vase. Unable to believe his own eyes, Gergely Barki, had only ever seen a faded black and white photo of Sleeping Lady with Black Vase taken in 1928 before it went missing without a paper trail in sight. As a researcher at the Hungarian National Gallery, Barki knows his Berény, and is certain that the prop cannot be a print or copy, given the obscurity of the artwork.
He swiftly embarks on a mission to track it down and ultimately finds the original painting, which had indeed ended up as a set piece in a popular Hollywood kids movie nearly a century later. The lost painting was recovered and made its way home, all thanks to Barki, a researcher at the Hungarian National Gallery, who also doubles up as a missing art detective on the mission to track down lost Hungarian masterpieces (more on that later). Let’s tumble through this strange-but-true art history mystery that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Wes Anderson film....
....MUCH MORE
