Fruits on a Table

Fruits on a Table (French title: Fruits sur une table) is a still life painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, believed to have been painted in 1889. It was one of two works stolen from a private collection in London, in June 1970, and recovered in April 2014. It is today worth an estimated €30 million.

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Fruit on a Table with a Small Dog, 1889

Description

The painting depicts two bowls containing brightly-coloured grapes, apples and other pieces of fruit on a wooden table in the foreground, with a small dog sleeping on the floor in the background. It is signed and dedicated "to the countess N". On the front is painted the number “89” to indicate that the work was painted in 1889. It measures 46.5 by 53 centimetres which is slightly smaller than when Gauguin created it because thieves cut the painting out of its frame.

Provenance

The painting, along with Pierre Bonnard's "The Girl With Two Chairs" (La Femme Aux Deux Fauteuils), was stolen from an apartment near Regent’s Park on June 6, 1970. The apartment was the home of Sir Mark Kennedy and his wife Mathilda Marks, the daughter of Michael Marks, the founder of the retail chain Marks & Spencer. Press reports claimed that the couple's housekeeper was duped by three men: one posing as a policeman and the others as burglar alarm engineers. They told her they were checking the alarm system, and they removed the paintings from the frames while she was making them tea. After the theft the paintings are thought to have been smuggled through France on a Paris-to-Turin train. They were left on board, possibly because of a border control or some other check, and found by railway personnel at Turin who put them in the lost-and-found depot. They were never claimed and put up for auction 1975, when a factory worker at Fiat Automobiles bought the unidentified paintings for a small amount of money.

Recovery

The paintings remained in the factory worker's kitchen until an art expert's evaluation in 2014. Once they were identified the Carabinieri was contacted and the paintings were taken into custody. Under Italian law, the factory worker had a right to keep them if he could prove that he bought them in good faith, and in December 2014 he was awarded ownership of them by a court in Rome.