Stolen Art Found for Penn. Owner; Calif. Collector Offers Massive Reward
- September 25, 2012 23:18
A stolen $3 million bust of Benjamin Franklin was recovered on the east coast while a $10 million cache of artworks missing from a California home has the collector upping the reward money.
The now-damaged Franklin bust was made in 1778 by Jean-Antoine Houdon. A housekeeper swiped the piece from the Bryn Mawr, Penn., home of lawyer George A. D'Angelo.
Police arrested former cleaning lady Andrea Lawton, 46, as she got off a bus in Maryland with the bust in a sack.
Still missing from the Santa Monica, Calif., home of bond trader Jeffrey Gundlach is a prized collection of art worth $10 million. Paintings, watches, a Porsche, and cash were taken from his home in mid-September.
In a press conference on Monday, Gundlach increased the reward for his art's safe retrun to $1.7 million, one of the largest rewards on record for the return of stolen art, according to the LA Times.
For his Piet Mondrian painting called "Composition (A) En Rouge Et Blanc," Gundlach is offering $1 million. He will pay $500,000 for the return of three other paintings, two by Joseph Cornell and one by Jasper Johns titled "Green Target."
Also missing are works by Richard Diebenkorn, Franz Kilne, Philip Guston and California impressionists Guy Rose, William Wendt, and Hanson Duvall Puthuff.