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Expert spots stolen work sold by Sotheby’s

"A stolen painting by the Dutch artist Jan Schoonhoven (1914-94) was jointly bought in London at Sotheby’s contemporary art day auction on 27 June by two galleries - London’s Mayor Gallery and Amsterdam’s Borzo Modern and Contemporary Art"

"The work was only identified as stolen when Paul van Rosmalen, a Schoonhoven expert working for the Dutch gallery, identified some discrepancies in photographs sent to him by the Mayor Gallery. (...)

The thief changed the title of the work from R69-32 to R69-39, a seemingly simple trick that enabled it to slip through provenance checks and end up at auction. (...)

The London-based Art Loss Register (ALR), which was notified of the theft in March, first alerted Sotheby’s after seeing the freshly renamed R69-39 come up for auction. “We raised the near-match with the auction house and since they said that the artist did many similar works, which were differentiated by the number, and the number was different, we accepted their word,” says Julian Radcliffe, the chairman of the ALR. (...)

Sotheby’s has cancelled the sale."

Ermanno Rivetti, October 10, 2013, http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Expert-spots-stolen-work-sold-by-Sothebys/30560

For a recent critical article on the Art Loss Register in the International New York Times, see http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/arts/design/tracking-stolen-art-for-profit-and-blurring-a-few-lines.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&.

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