Stolen Gauguin on Sicily kitchen wall for 40 years_美文

Stolen Gauguin on Sicily kitchen wall for 40 years

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A Paul Gauguin still life stolen from a wealthy collector's home in Britain decades ago has been recovered after hanging for 40 years in a Sicilian autoworker's kitchen.

The worker bought the painting along with one of lesser value by another French artist, Pierre Bonnard, for about $100 at a 1975 Italian state railway auction of unclaimed lost items, said Major Massimiliano Quagliarella of the paramilitary Carabinieri art theft squad.

Italian authorities estimated on Wednesday the still life's worth in a range from 10 million Euros ($14 million) to 30 million Euros.

"The painting, showing fruit, seemed to fit in with dining room decor," Quagliarella said about the now-retired autoworker's choice of placement in his kitchen, first in Turin, then in Sicily.

The painting is believed to have "traveled" on a Paris-to-Turin train before it was found by railway personnel who put it in the lost-and-found depot, said General Mariano Mossa. After the autoworker retired to Sicily, the man's son, who studied architecture at university, noticed a telling detail: a dog curled up in the corner.

Dogs were sometimes a signature motif for Gauguin's work.

The man's son contacted an art expert to get an evaluation. The expert concluded the work was likely a Gauguin painting, and contacted the Carabinieri's division dedicated to recovering stolen and trafficked art and ancient artifacts.