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Boston college loses French Cubist painting

27.08.2008 21:01 Arts - Source: cbc.ca

Woman and Child, painted in 1921 by French Cubist Fernand Lger, has gone missing from Wellesley College.(Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College/Associated Press)

Has someone stolen a 1921 painting by French Cubist Fernand Lger? Or just thrown it in the trash by accident?

That's the question facing Wellesley College, a Boston area women's college which once owned a Lger painting called Woman and Child.

The painting vanished last year after it was borrowed and returned from an exhibit at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

"We've all wondered about it," Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, associate professor of art at Wellesley, told the Boston Globe. "It's a tremendous loss for the college, but, beyond that, we just don't have a lot of information."

Woman and Child, which has been part of the college's art collection since 1954, was created during Lger's "mechanical period" when all objects were rendered as if they were machine-like.

Lger's works currently sell for an average of $2.8 million US.

The painting was returned from the Oklahoma exhibit in a box with two other paintings, which are accounted for.

But the box wasn't opened right away because of renovations being carried out in the Wellesley gallery.

The museum didn't realize the 53 x 63-centimetre painting was gone until last November.

Nobody knows whether the painting was stolen or mistakenly thrown out when packing crates were discarded.

Police have since investigated and an insurer has made a payout on the missing art.

With files from the Associated Press

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