{"id":50813,"date":"2017-02-06T18:40:54","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T02:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=50813"},"modified":"2017-02-06T18:40:54","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T02:40:54","slug":"stuart-little-missing-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2017\/02\/stuart-little-missing-masterpiece\/","title":{"rendered":"Stuart Little and the Missing Masterpiece"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n

\"sleeping-lady-stuart-little\"<\/a>It\u2019s a good bet that after you read this article, you\u2019ll start paying more attention to background props in movies.<\/em><\/p>\n

A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was Christmas Eve 2009. Gergely Barki, an art historian and researcher with the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, had settled in with his daughter Lola to watch the 1999 movie Stuart Little<\/em>. As Barki\u2019s daughter snuggled on his lap to giggle at Stuart the mouse\u2019s onscreen antics, Barki couldn\u2019t believe his eyes. In a scene where Stuart and his human family have a conversation in front of a fireplace, Barki recognized the painting hanging on the wall in the background. It was no ordinary set dressing\u2014it was a lost Hungarian masterpiece that hadn\u2019t been seen in public since 1928.<\/p>\n

\u201cI nearly dropped Lola from my lap,\u201d Barki said. \u201cIt was like a miracle of Christmas for me. It seems almost impossible to find a painting hidden in a Hollywood movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Gergely Barki had recognized was artist R\u00f3bert Ber\u00e9ny\u2019s Sleeping Lady with Black Vase<\/em>. Ber\u00e9ny was one of \u201cthe Eight\u201d\u2014a group of avant-garde artists who modernized Hungary\u2019s art movement starting in 1909. Not only was Ber\u00e9ny an important Hungarian artist, he was also a colorful figure. In 1920, he fled Hungary after designing recruitment posters for a failed communist revolution. He was also rumored to have had affairs with actress Marlene Dietrich and Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia.<\/p>\n

Sleeping Lady with Black Vase<\/em> was an art deco portrait of Ber\u00e9ny\u2019s second wife that he painted in 1926. But it had vanished. In fact, the only image of the painting that Barki had ever seen was a black-and-white photograph in a 1928 exhibition catalog. Yet he had no doubt he\u2019d spotted the missing painting. \u201cIt was not just on screen for one second but in several scenes of the film, so I knew I was not dreaming,\u201d he said. Barki had to track it down.<\/p>\n

A \u201cLITTLE\u201d PROBLEM<\/strong><\/p>\n

The art researcher emailed Sony and Columbia Pictures, the studios that produced Stuart Little<\/em>. Production executives remembered the painting, but they had no idea where it had gone after filming ended. So Barki worked his way through the list of cast and crew and emailed everyone who\u2019d touched the movie in any way. Nobody could help. Then, two years after Barki had first spotted Sleeping Lady with Black Vase<\/em>, he received an email from an assistant set director.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d been in charge of finding props for the film and bought the painting for $500 in a Pasadena, California, antique shop. When the movie was over, she took it home. \u201cIt was hanging on her bedroom wall in Washington,\u201d Barki said. \u201cWithin a year, I had a chance to visit her and see the painting and tell her everything about the painter. She was very surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

But how had a Hungarian masterpiece ended up in Pasadena?<\/p>\n

FROM HUNGARY TO CALIFORNIA<\/strong><\/p>\n

The painting\u2019s previous owner, Michael Hempstead, recognized his Sleeping Lady<\/em> when the story hit the news. He\u2019d purchased it at a St. Vincent de Paul charity auction in San Diego in the mid-1990s. \u201cI think I only paid $40,\u201d he said. \u201cSomebody had just donated it, probably with a lot of other items.\u201d Hempstead knew it was Ber\u00e9ny\u2019s work but had no idea it was considered lost. He resold it for around $400 to the Pasadena antique shop where the assistant set designer later found it.<\/p>\n

Where had the painting been before Hempstead bought it? Nobody knows. Gergely Barki\u2019s guess is that a collector had first purchased it from the 1928 exhibition where it was displayed in the archived catalog he\u2019d seen. \u201cThat was when it was last exhibited and, as most of the buyers were Jewish, it probably left the country as a result of the war,\u201d he theorized. \u201cAfter the wars, revolutions, and tumult of the 20th century many Hungarian masterpieces are lost, scattered around the world.\u201d It may never be known exactly how the artwork landed in a Catholic charity auction.<\/p>\n

BACK ON THE BLOCK<\/strong><\/p>\n

The assistant set designer (who asked to remain anonymous throughout) sold the painting to an art collector for an undisclosed sum. On December 13, 2014, the painting went to a Budapest gallery to be auctioned. Sleeping Lady with Back Vase<\/em>, which had been bought for $40 in San Diego and $500 in Pasadena, sold for $285,700 to an unnamed Hungarian buyer.<\/p>\n

Gergely Barki decided not to attend the auction. \u201cIt was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience to discover the painting. That was the exciting part,\u201d he said. Thanks to Barki\u2019s keen eye, Sleeping Lady with Black Vase<\/em> was rescued from obscurity and returned to Hungary. As Barki noted, \u201cA researcher can never take his eyes off the job, even when watching Christmas movies at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>This article is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Uncanny Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em>. This groundbreaking series has been imitated time and time again but never equaled. And Uncanny<\/i> is the Bathroom Readers\u2019 Institute at their very best. Covering a wide array of topics\u2014incredible origins, forgotten history, weird news, amazing science, dumb crooks, and more\u2014readers of all ages will enjoy these 512 pages of the best stuff in print.<\/p>\n

Since 1987, the Bathroom Readers\u2019 Institute<\/a> has led the movement to stand up for those who sit down and read in the bathroom (and everywhere else for that matter). With more than 15 million books in print, the Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader series is the longest-running, most popular series of its kind in the world.<\/p>\n

If you like Today I Found Out<\/a>, I guarantee you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books, so check them out<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader It\u2019s a good bet that after you read this article, you\u2019ll start paying more attention to background props in movies. A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE It was Christmas Eve 2009. Gergely Barki, an art historian and researcher with the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, had settled in with his daughter Lola to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":50814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-i-found-out","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50815,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50813\/revisions\/50815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}