Collector finds his stolen art headed for auction, sues
In 1978, Michael Bakwin went from being a quiet art collector to being the victim of the largest unsolved robbery from a private residence in Massachusetts. Returning from a holiday weekend, he found that seven precious paintings had been stolen from his Stockbridge home.
And now he feels he's a victim again, as he finds himself forced to go to court to prevent four of the stolen works from being put up for auction at
The paintings, worth about $3 million, surfaced last spring in London, in the possession of the Erie International Trading Co., an obscure organization with a Panamanian address. When Bakwin learned that the company had plans to auction the works, he asked the Art Loss Register, a firm that tracks stolen art, to intervene.
Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register, said he wants to know who the owners of Erie International Trading are, how they got the paintings, and what they may know about the theft.
''Until we know more about the circumstances of how they gained these paintings, we have to assume that Erie Trading knew they were stolen when they bought them, or worse, knows who stole them," Radcliffe said.
He added: ''If we learn that they are legitimate people who gained these paintings through no untoward means, we are willing to step aside."
Andrew Lafferty, a London lawyer representing Erie International, declined to comment on the lawsuit or on how the company had secured the paintings.
No one has been charged with the theft of the collection, which was assembled by Bakwin's parents beginning in the 1930s. But one of the paintings, the most valuable of the lot, was eventually recovered, with Radcliffe's help.
It was a still-life masterwork by Paul Cezanne; it surfaced unexpectedly in Switzerland in 1999. And to get it back, Radcliffe agreed to give Erie International title to the other six works.
Radcliffe said he had signed the contract under duress, believing it to be the only way to recover the Cezanne. He said the deal, therefore, should be voided.
''If I wanted to get [the Cezanne] back at the time, I had to sign that agreement. And I told them so at the time," Radcliffe said in a recent telephone interview.
Once the Cezanne -- ''Bouilloire et Fruits," or pitcher and fruit -- was in his hands, Bakwin decided he could never provide security for it. He put the painting up for auction, and a collector bought it for almost $30 million.
The other six paintings are vastly less valuable. The four now perhaps headed for auction are two portraits by Chaim Soutine, an early 20th century expressionist, and two others by French painters Maurice de Vlaminck and Maurice Utrillo.
Even though these are lesser pieces, Radcliffe said, he will not allow the auction to proceed without a legal protest.
Lawyers for the Art Loss Register filed suit in July, asking that a London judge order the paintings returned to Bakwin. A hearing on the case is set for next month.
''Without knowing more about them, there is no way that these people should stand to profit from the auction of stolen paintings," Radcliffe said of Erie International Trading. ''It simply serves to encourage further art theft."
Radcliffe said he has a clearer sense now of what happened to the artworks after they were taken from Bakwin's house. When working to recover the Cezanne, Radcliffe said, he was told by an Erie International lawyer that the paintings had been spirited to Russia and hidden there until a British resident brought them to Switzerland in search of a buyer.
But Radcliffe said he now suspects the paintings had been taken to Switzerland shortly after the theft and stored there. The thieves, he said, apparently hoped to make use of a provision in Swiss law under which people can claim legal possession of stolen items if they can show they had bought them in good faith and had held them for five years or more.
Although he declined to comment on the specifics of the case, Special Agent Robert Wittman, who heads the FBI's National Art Crime unit, said he was aware of Bakwin's lawsuit and that the FBI tracks ''for intelligence reasons" developments in all major art thefts. The statute of limitations for the actual break-in at Bakwin's house expired in the mid-1980s, but anyone who moved the stolen artwork across state lines or overseas during the past six years can still be prosecuted.
Stephen Kurkjian can be reached via kurkjian@globe.com.
