A Society Portrait
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

George de Forest Brush (1855-1941)
Nancy, the Artist's Daughter [Mrs. Robert Pearmain]
Oil on wood panel, 37 x 28 inches
Circa 1915
Collection of the New Britain Museum of America Art

Most biographers indicate that the Brush residence was run in a very casual style. The younger children were often not clothed at all and the house was in general disarray. George de Forest Brush (1855-1941) did have a following, but his income was never large. On the other hand he had considerable pride and self-esteem and didn’t like to be pushed around.

He had a fine commission to paint a society matron for, I believe, a considerable amount. She had an elegant dress made for the occasion which Brush thought abominable. He dressed her as he thought more fitting, not letting her see the portrait till it was finished. When he did turn it around, she was shocked and furious, insisting that he change the dress to her own. When she stormed out of the studio he called his daughter, Mrs. Pearmain, and asked her to take the chair, adding her head to the portrait.

We later owned the portrait and sold it to the New Britain Museum in Connecticut.

A Bingham for Boston
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879)
Landscape with Waterwheel and Boy Fishing
Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches
Signed lower left: G C Bingham / 1853
Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

On December 24th, 1970, a client telephoned us from Marshfield, Massachusetts saying she had an old painting signed “Bingham” which she wanted to sell. I wasted no time in calling on her. She lived in a tiny Cape Cod house heated by portable kerosene heaters. Everything was coated with a greasy film.

We cleaned the painting and a month or so later had a call from Perry Rathbone of the Boston Museum saying he understood we had the Bingham. It seems the client had written to the museum at the same time she wrote us, but they hadn’t gotten around to answering for several weeks. Anyway, they bought the Bingham for a fair price on March 17th, 1971. I don’t remember what the net was to the client, but I’m sure it was more than her house was worth. A happy story.

Through the years we have had many such cases where prompt action has made the difference. I remember one in which I drove half way across New York State to see a painting the day after hearing about it only to find that a New York dealer had chartered a plane and beat me by twenty-four hours.

Country Politicians
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879)
Country Politicians, 1849
Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches
Collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, III

Mr. and Mrs. Smith of Tawanda, Pennsylvania (a young couple in their 20s) called us and said that Professor Maurice Bloch of Los Angeles, author of the two-volume work on Bingham, had suggested they get in touch with us regarding the possible sale of a painting by Bingham. They had bought a small brick house, including the furnishings, for $10,000. They both worked, and Mrs. Smith wanted something to decorate her office. She took down a small painting from the second floor hall and found an old label reading “George Caleb Bingham” on the back. Curious, she asked the local library if they knew anything about him. They didn’t but called the Philadelphia Library. They found Bloch’s books and gave the Smiths his address. They got in touch with him and hence with us (happily!).

I flew down there the next day and took the painting back with me on consignment. We cleaned the piece and estimated its worth at considerably more than ten times the value of the Smith’s house. On January 20th, 1972 we sold Country Politicians to John D. Rockefeller III, who later gifted it along with much of his collection to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Naturally, a thank-you check was sent to Professor Bloch.

This story once more proves money to be the root of all evil. The Smiths’ friends began to look coolly at them now that they were wealthier, so they moved up to northern Maine, were soon divorced, and doubtless wished they had never discovered that little label.

Una and the Red Cross Knight
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872)
Una and the Red Cross Knight
Oil on panel, 26 x 43 inches

In late 1950, I was sound asleep in an upper New York State motel when I received a call from a private dealer with an excellent eye but too much fondness for alcohol. He said that he had found something good, and, although he was obviously drunk, I drove to Coxackie to meet him the next day. I was led to a small farm house. In the backyard the owner had set two oils on panels of identical size on a wheelbarrow. They measured 26 x 43 and were about an inch thick with grooves cut around the edges to admit screws. One was a view of the falls of the Kaaterskill by Thomas Cole, and the other a scene from Spencer’s “Faerie Queene”, Una and the Red Cross Knight. Although I didn’t know who painted the second painting, research proved it beyond any doubt to be by Samuel F. B. Morse. The two paintings were part of a set ordered for the salon of the steamship Albany being built by Philip Hone. Samuel Morse, in a later speech, listed this set as the first example of a commission to artists by industry.

I spent so long deciding what to do about the two paintings in that wheelbarrow behind the farmhouse that I got a painful sunburn on the top of my head! We bought the Morse on the spot, and sold it to the Toledo Museum on February 23, 1951. What a beautiful painting!

Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket Island: An American Masterpiece
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

Eastman Johnson(1870-1966)
The Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket Island
Oil on canvas, 27 3/8 x 54 1/2 inches
Collection of the Timken Museum of Art

"Eastman Johnson’s The Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket Island was probably the most important American landscape we ever sold.

It was found in Scotland by an agent of a Litchfield, Connecticut, art dealer in 1970. He had sent it over and met the plane at the Kennedy Airport. It didn’t appear. He immediately called the airport detective and with him found it in a shed behind some machinery. A value of $250,000 had been written on the box (a red-flag to robbers). After recovering the piece, the dealer drove it to Boston and we opened the box in the back yard at 238 Newbury. What a moment! We set a higher price than had ever been had for an American painting, and it was the laughing stock of disbelieving New York dealers for months.

A prominent New York museum wanted the painting and had it sent down. I went there and opened the box myself. They offered to trade another Eastman Johnson, a group of Sargent water colors and some cash. We decided against it.

A museum in Washington, D.C. also wanted it and had it sent down. The committee turned it down and bought a $600,000 Cezanne instead. The director was disappointed.

The director of the Timken Gallery in San Diego was his own boss and didn’t have to bother with committees. He very smartly bought it on March 18, 1972, and set a record. My wife, Ann, and I were at a delightful luncheon at a Fort Worth Country Club at the opening of a Bierstadt show when we got the happy news by phone from the gallery. Ann and I took seats with the painting in a 747 to L.A. (I think seven seats in all), lugged it into a motel, rented a station wagon and delivered it to the museum. I remember as we carried the box onto the plane a stewardess said “You have to be kidding!!”

The piece is now the star of the Timken Museum of Art’s American collection, and in 1989 it was recognized as one of the 19th century American masterpieces."

The Con-Artist from Peekskill
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)
Jason and his Teacher (detail)
Oil on canvas, 40 x 32 inches
Private Collection

"In the fall of 1973 a stocky man possibly in his forties called on us and said he was interested in some paintings. On November 14th I drove to Peekskill, New York, and called on him at 196 Furnace Dock Road to show him photographs. The house was a remarkable one built as a one-man residence by Jacky Gleason. Everything was circular. The bed-room (and bed which was about ten feet in diameter), the shower which was enclosed in glass, his desk (semi-circular) etc. His desk chair was on a swivel so that he could turn around and play the semi-circular organ. He composed music. The gutters on the roof funneled water to a stream that ran down beside the stair and eventually out doors to a gold fish pond.

The house was filled with expensive paintings, silver, furniture, books, etc. I remember seeing Thomas Benton’s big Suzannah & the Elders hanging there. Anyway, everything suggested great wealth. “Wertz” asked me to send down nearly $100,000 worth of paintings: Maxfield Parrish’s Jason and His Teacher, Arthur Dove’s Green, Black & Gray, and Jack Levine’s Quartet at Copley. On November 27, 1973, Terry Vose delivered and hung those three paintings.

Not getting anywhere with repeated calls and letters requesting either a check or decision not to buy, I made an appointment to call on the client. On May 24, 1974, I drove to Peekskill, was greeted at the door by a pleasant young man who offered me a cup of coffee and showed me the house which was absolutely and completely empty!

“Wertz” was apparently a top-notch con-man and had absconded with everything. The FBI did a fine job of locating the loot and on June 27, 1974 I had to appear before a Grand Jury at the Federal Court House in Foley Square in New York City to testify that the three paintings were indeed ours. It was another five years after the FBI recovered the paintings that they returned them to us. In the mean time the Parrish family was very patient. Max, Jr. even said if we never got Jason back, not to worry. We had done so well for the family they would expect nothing.

The consignor of the other two paintings was less understanding and said that the theft was our problem and he wanted his money. This meant that we had to come up with $55,000 for him. That was a particularly poor bit of timing for us as, at the same moment, a client had renigged on a definite purchase from us of a Stuart Washington that was on consignment. The owner of the Stuart was in the process of buying a Rolls Royce hearse (!) and had asked me for a statement in writing that his Stuart was sold. I told him that I certainly didn’t need word in writing from this particular client. Anyway, we had to come up with $95,000 to the Stuart owner.

Eventually we dug our way out, selling the Stuart to the Museum in El Paso, the Dove and Levine to a private collector, and the Parrish to a local dealer."

Letter from Maxfield Parrish, Jr. to Robert C. Vose, Jr:

June 5, 1974

Sketch by Maxfield Parrish, Jr.
Included in his letter to Robert C. Vose, Jr.
June 5, 1974

Yours,

Maxfield Parrish, Jr.

The Spanish Craze of the 1920s: Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945)

Senor Zuloaga’s paintings need no introduction, but we are happy to introduce the artist himself on his first visit to Boston.

We are greatly indebted to Governor Fuller for the loan of his three splendid examples, which alone would make an exhibit of much importance.

Few people today would recognize the name of Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945). Yet in his 1925 show at Vose Galleries, over 22,000 devotees viewed the exhibition, a record for attendance that still stands. "The excitement of this week will be the opening at the Vose Gallery of the large exhibition of paintings by Zuloaga, admirable and admired painter" proclaimed the Boston Herald. "To have secured the Zuloagas is an achievement upon which Mr. Vose will long receive congratulations." Articles on Zuloaga appeared in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Town and Country, and International Studio.

Wrote John Singer Sargent of his Spanish contemporary: "An exhibition of the works of Ignacio Zuloaga is an event to be proclaimed as one of supreme artistic interest ... one is sure that his genius will receive in this country the recognition that he has conquered in the old world.”

An eminent art critic of the day, Dr. Christian Brinton, wrote a glowing forward to the show catalog. "Peopled with matadors, and tianeros, sensuous gitanas, cynical priests and seductive women of society, these canvases are instinct with passion and fatalism. It is through gazing into the spectrum of his own soul that is destined to endure(sic).”

But his art did not endure, plunging into obscurity after the artist’s death. After a 1991 retrospective exhibition of his work, a reviewer in Connoisseur wondered "why this once important figure has been relegated to such minor status" and speculated that the painter was eclipsed by Modernism or that some of his works descended to "sheer kitsch". Others speculate that his personal magnetism was more a cause of his acclaim than his talent, or that his sensual nudes were a magnet for the huge crowds, or that romanticizing all things Spanish obscured critical evaluation.

Ignacio Zuloaga - gifted artist or hypemaster? We can add only one maxim that has guided us for over 150 years: The popularity of an artist is as difficult to predict as the weather.

Washington Must Stay Here!

Emanuel Leutze(1816-1868)
Washington at Dorchester Heights, 1852
Oil on canvas
Collection of the City of Boston
Boston Public Library

So pleaded the City of Boston’s poster to sway her citizens, in honor of the city’s 325th anniversary, to purchase a mammoth oil painting by Emanuel Leutze depicting the most famous event of the Revolutionary War. This portrait, which stands 10 feet high, shows General Washington, March 17, 1776, standing on the summit of Dorchester Heights, now South Boston, watching the entire British Army of 2,000 redcoats aboard 150 ships, retreat out of Boston for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Robert C. Vose, who had acquired the painting directly from the family that had commissioned it in 1852, desperately wanted this monumental epic to remain in Boston. He showed the piece to Mayor John Hynes who upon seeing the painting remarked “we must have it.” Vose, Hynes and 75 prominent citizens joined together to make a pubic appeal to raise the $7,500 purchase price.

Mayor Hynes’ appeal received a trememdous public response due to the painting’s dramatic story which took place over 75 years earlier. Having lost the Battle of Lexington and Concord just eleven months before, the Americans were overjoyed when Colonel Ethan Allen and his "Green Mountain Boys" defeated the British near Fort Ticonderoga, New York. American troops hauled the captured munitions, some 70 cannons weighing more than 105,000 pounds, 300 miles by oxcart to Boston through the winter snow. General Washington quietly surrounded the town and harbor with the powerful guns.

British commander Lord Howe, stunned and unable to mount an attack because of violent weather, struck a deal to evacuate the city if Washington would hold his menacing cannon fire. Washington readily agreed and news of the victory soon electrified American patriots throughout the thirteen colonies. Less than four months later, the Continental Congress, armed with a new sense of confidence, proclaimed the "Declaration of Independence," marking the beginning of a new nation.

It took only four months to raise the money, and in 1955, the piece was sold to the city of Boston. Today, George Washington at Dorchester Heights hangs in the Boston Public Library’s Washington Room.

Robert Salmon’s View of Algiers

Robert Salmon (1775-1851)
View of Algiers, 1828
Tempera on canvas mounted on board
Collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art

In 1967, Ann and Bob Vose (Robert C. Vose, Jr.) visited the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, to view a painting exhibition featuring the works of Robert Salmon, Boston’s premier ship painter during the second quarter of the 19th century. As they admired an enormous rendering of The British Fleet Forming a Line Off Algiers, 1829 (loaned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Ann exclaimed, “Remember that huge grubby old mural rolled up in the gallery attic? It must be a companion painting to this one!” After returning to the gallery they slowly unrolled the dusty canvas and there was no doubt: this painting, measuring 5 feet by 15 feet, was a view of Algiers and done by the same hand.

Subsequent research has revealed that shortly after he arrived in Boston from England in 1828, Robert Salmon painted three murals as part of a public panorama. The first painting shows a view of Algiers in 1816 prior to bombardment by the British and Dutch fleets; the second shows the fleets preparing to attack; and the third shows the destruction of Algiers. Because Algiers had long been a center for piracy, the exhibit met with great public interest and most likely provided a good source of income for the artist. After its authentication, Robert Salmon’s View of Algiers found an enthusiastic home at the New Britain Museum of American Art, and one of America’s earliest treasures was saved from its ignoble bed amidst the cobwebs and mothballs.

Old Man Stanley
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

Albert Bierstadt
Seal Rock
Oil on canvas, 30 x 44 inches
Collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art

One of my favorite art stories happened on the day before Christmas in 1940. Sanford Low, an artist and first director of the museum in New Britain, Connecticut, and an irreverent free spirit and completely independent soul wanted to interest the area’s wealthiest mogul in collecting art. "Old Man Stanley sitting up there in his castle on the top of the hill with all his millions," said Low, "and everybody is scared of him. He has no one to talk to. Let’s take some of your pictures for him to see."

On the way Low mentioned, "I understand that this old boy is not only a teetotaler, but he doesn’st approve of anybody else drinking. So first thing, I’ll ask him for a drink." Low introduced himself and said, "This is my friend, Vose, come all the way down from Boston, and he’s awful thirsty. Can we have a little bourbon?" The stern Mr. Stanley rocked back on his heels, but he called the butler and got some bourbon.

I set the pictures around the room and Mr. Stanley finally said, "Well, Mr. Low, thank you very much. I don’t know anything about paintings. I’m not interested in paintings, but thank you for bringing them up." Low exclaimed, "I know you don’t know anything about paintings, but I do, and these are good pictures, and you should buy them." Again, Mr. Stanley was obviously taken aback, and said, "Which ones?" Low raved about five of the paintings and to our complete astonishment, Mr. Stanley quietly wrote a check on the spot. His first foray into the art world changed Mr. Stanley’s life, and eventually the whole art life of the city, even collecting in America. Alex Stanley became one of the top three collectors of American paintings. He went on to buy 250 paintings, and even took up painting himself. His collection ultimately provided the anchor for the New Britain Museum of American Art.

How to Get an 8 Foot by 6 Foot Painting in the Back of a Car
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

Victor Nehlig
Pocahontas Saving Capt. John Smith
Oil on canvas, 91 x 77 inches
Collection of Brigham Young University

In upstate New York during the early fifties, I found a wonderful early American painting, Pocahontas and John Smith by Victor Nehlig. I paid a local dealer $100 for the picture who then smiled as I tried in vain to stuff the 8 foot canvas into the back of my old wooden Ford wagon. I soon realized that it would cost several times the price of the painting to have it trucked back to Boston.

Necessity being the mother of invention, I bought several old whiskey barrels from the general store and nailed them end to end, took the painting off its stretcher, and gently rolled the painting around the barrels, paint side out. I put some screw eyes on the inside wooden roof of the wagon and suspended the roll so it wouldn’st chafe. It stuck out the end several feet, but dry weather prevailed and I steered the Pocahontas-mobile gingerly through the snarls of Boston traffic.

Safely back in her frame and newly cleaned, Pocahontas and John quickly found a new home in a spectacular apartment in New York City. This time, they arrived in a moving van.

In search of Ernest Albert: Terry Vose’s Odyssey to Guatemala

A long-distance phone call from Guatemala piqued the curiosity of Robert C. Vose III (Terry). Did we have any interest in paintings by Ernest Albert? In 1981, Vose Galleries, along with the Albert Family, staged the first retrospective show of the Connecticut Impressionist’s work since his death, and Terry was eager to find more.

Guatemala conjured visions of a police state with armed guards and tanks, but instead Terry found a lush land whose native population is world famous for its textiles. Terry soon met the world expert on the subject: Ernest Albert’s grandson. Thirty years earlier “Hank” established the first United States trade mission in Guatemala, settled there, and amassed the largest collection of native textiles in the world, some 9,500 items. He soon whisked Terry to the city of Chi Chi, a three-hundred-year-old mecca of trade where a farrago of Guatemalans displayed their crafts.

Finally they reached Hank’s 16th-century Spanish-style home. On the walls of this unlikely spot hung twenty-three of Ernest Albert’s finest oils, in pristine condition and never before on the market, an art dealer’s nirvana.

Is there a Market for Castles?
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

Jasper F. Cropsey
The Spirit of War
Oil on canvas, 43 5/8 x 67 1/2 inches
Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Gift of the Avalon Foundation

A young artist friend bought a house in the Adirondacks. While cleaning out the garage, he noticed a huge painting in a very heavy frame, so heavy that he could barely turn the picture to the light. He called Vose Galleries and inquired, "Is there any market for paintings of castles?" We asked him to look for a signature, and he said there was a large tablet on it that said "Cropsey", one of the famous Hudson River School painters.

We urged him to bring the painting to Boston. Little did we realize that he would tie the painting on the top of his car for the journey, but he fortunately arrived without incident. It turned out to be Cropsey’s Spirit of War, his most exhibited and famous painting.

We alerted the National Gallery in Washington, where it now hangs. I’m sure that our artist friend got back much more than he paid for his entire house. In fact, it must have been ten times as much!

The allegorical Spirit of War, along with its companion painting Spirit of Peace, were exhibited seven times between 1852 and 1857. Cropsey based Spirit of War on a poem by Sir Walter Scott, "Lay of the Last Minstrel", which describes the terrors of approaching war. The feudal setting depicts dawn after the enemy has ransacked a village. Defending knights ride forth to do battle, while a goatherd seeks protection from the castle and a mother and child lie by the roadside, exhausted from the carnage.

*These tales and many more are captured in our 150th Anniversary commemorative video, “Tales of An Art Dealer,” 1991. This 30-minute video has been aired nationwide on PBS. $25.00 each, proceeds to benefit the Archives of American Art.

The Blushing Blacksmith
As told by Abbot W. Vose, President

Great grandfather Seth M. Vose (1831-1910) never approved of nudes. In one shipment of paintings from France, he received a full-length front view of a nude blacksmith (pictured, right). It was a fine painting from the school of Gericault, and couldn’t be discarded! So, he cut the figure off at the hips and sold the upper half to Mrs. Samuel D. Warren, one of Boston’s most prominent collectors, who left it to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Some fifty years later, Seth’s son, Robert C. Vose (1873-1964), found the lower half in one of the gallery’s warehouse rooms. He gave it to the museum, where the two halves were successfully reunited.

Mickey Dowd and the White Elephant
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

At 8:00 one morning in New York City, I rang the doorbell of Cecil “Mickey” Dowd, one of the more colorful members of the last generation of wholesale art dealers. Mickey came to the door in slippers and trousers with a towel over his shoulder and shaving soap on his face. Offering some profanity about the early hour, he pointed me to the coffeepot on a hot plate and continued shaving. As I gazed at the stacks of paintings in his small apartment, I noticed one huge work protruding some two feet above the others. When I commented that it looked like a [Thomas] Gainsborough, Mickey replied that it was, but what could one do with a “damned white elephant like that.” It was obviously a magnificent picture so I had him ship it to my father’s gallery. It was so big that it had to be tied on top of the elevator. Riding up with it was an unusual experience!

Research showed that the artist had at one point offered his nephew, Gainsborough du Pont, a choice of anything in the studio, and this was the nephew’s selection. Later, the painting was in Canada for a number of generations, its location unknown to art historians. Dr. George Edghill of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, recognized its quality and quickly arranged purchase of the lost masterpiece, at what we believed to be a modest price. When I took my father, then in his eighties and in a wheel chair, to view the painting in the museum’s newest acquisition room, we noticed the museum president, with his back to us, showing the painting to a friend. We retreated hastily when we heard him say, “We just stole this one.”

The Governor, The Copley, and Miss Ima
As told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1911-1998)

In 1954 I had secured permission from former Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller for a Dutch dealer friend and me to see the impressionist paintings in the Fuller House in Little Boar’s Head, New Hampshire. We drove up on a Sunday and the caretaker laboriously showed us every bathroom and closet in the house. On the top floor there was a large closet in which summer clothes were hung in paper bags. Between them I saw a beautiful 18th century American frame and asked to see what was in it. Out came this great Copley! The next day I called Governor Fuller and asked if he might sell it as it wasn’t hung. He kept me on the edge of my chair for months before agreeing to the sale.

When I arrived on a summer Sunday around 3:00 p.m., the family was still at the dinner table but said to go ahead. As I came down the stairs, the Governor turned around and said, "Let me see it." Then, "Never saw it before."

With my prize I had hoped to attract a potential client, Miss Ima Hogg from Houston, and when I called her office, fate was with me. Miss Hogg happened to be visiting nearby at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and agreed to see the painting. I greeted her with, "How do you do, Miss Hoag," mispronouncing her name, and she replied, “My name is Hogg." But she bought the Copley on the spot, the first colonial portrait of her collection.

The sale of the Copley started a long relationship with Miss Ima, as she became a major collector of paintings and furnishings for Bayou Bend, the house she bequeathed to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She was a very interesting and kindly person, but she liked service- none of this shipping a painting down for her to hang. I had to transport and hang the paintings myself. But whenever I went down there, in my hotel room she’sd have tickets to the symphony or theater. Or she would put on a dinner party for me and introduce me to museum directors and collectors.

The last time I saw her, she took me and my young sons to lunch at the country club and said, "I took your advice in the beginning and have been taking it ever since." She was one of the great ladies of Houston and left an astounding personal collection.

Robert C. Vose’s Favorite Story: Travels of a Lady

While in Los Angeles in 1929, a client persuaded Robert C. Vose (1873-1964) to appraise a group of paintings in a monastery in Hollywood Hills. As Robert had suspected, the walls were filled with copies of old masters — until he reached the last small room. There on the wall hung a rare Rembrandt, one of the forty or more that had been attributed at that time to the seventeenth-century Dutchman.

Portrait of a Girl Wearing a Gold-Trimmed Cloak, dated 1632, had been sent to the Hollywood monastery some ten years earlier by the Catholic Bishop of Chur, Switzerland. The bishop hoped the Rembrandt would appeal to a wealthy Hollywood mogul.

Upon receiving word of Robert C. Vose’s interest, the bishop and his retinue of a dozen attendants spent a week in Boston negotiating the sale. Robert finally procured the painting for $100,000. A month before the stock market crash of 1929, the happy dealer sold the painting to Robert Treat Paine, a wealthy Boston collector, for $125,000. Paine loaned the masterpiece to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where it was still hanging at the time of Robert’s demise in 1964. Little did Robert know his prized painting would continue its bizarre journey.

In 1975, in a brazen noontime heist at the museum, two theives stole the portrait at gunpoint and pistol-whipped a guard in the process. The FBI worked for its recovery with a jailed rock group leader who had been charged with a series of crimes, among them art theft. Perhaps to avoid a prison term, the convict negotiated secretly for the painting’s return. Portrait of a Girl was soon recovered, miraculously unharmed, from the trunk of an abandoned car.

Eleven years later, the Boston museum was jolted when Paine’s heirs decided to sell the painting at auction. At a price of over $10,000,000, more than four times the highest price ever paid for a Rembrandt, Portrait of a Girl disappeared once again, this time to an unknown buyer who had submitted an anonymous bid.