bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

An avant-garde painting lost for nine decades until a Hungarian researcher spotted it being used as a prop in the Hollywood film Stuart Little has sold for more than €200,000 at an auction in Budapest.
The painting Sleeping Lady with Black Vase, by Robert Bereny (1887-1953), fetched €229,500 (HK$2,217 million) - more than doubling its €110,000 reserve price.
The buyer was an unnamed private Hungarian collector, staff at the Virag Judit auction house said.
"I always knew it was a masterpiece. Now it seems the market agrees," said Gergely Barki, 43, the Hungarian National Gallery researcher who noticed the painting in the 1999 kids' movie about a mouse as he watched TV with his daughter Lola on Christmas Eve six years ago.

	I always knew it was a masterpiece. Now it seems the market agrees

	RESEARCHER GERGELY BARKI
The work disappeared in the late-1920s but Barki recognised it immediately - even though he had only ever seen a faded black-and-white photo dating from a 1928 exhibition catalogue archived in the National Gallery.
Its unorthodox discovery even caught the attention of English actor Hugh Laurie, who co-starred in Stuart Little along with US actress Geena Davis and Michael J. Fox as the voice of the eponymous mouse.
"Little hurt to discover the foreground performances couldn't hold the attention but still, what an honour," he tweeted last week about his role in the painting's find.
The re-emergence of the painting also stirred mixed feelings for a relative of Bereny.
San Francisco-based filmmaker Lidia Szajko, grandchild of Bereny and his second wife Eta who features in the painting, said she wished her grandfather were alive to enjoy the attention.
"His life would have been easier with the recognition and valuations of his work," Szajko said. "It's a fantastic painting, I hope the new owner will lend it for exhibition so many more of us can enjoy it."
A former owner, Californian art dealer Michael Hempstead, said he recalled buying the painting for about US$40 at a Catholic Church charity auction in San Diego in the late 1990s.
He sold it soon after for about US$400 to an antiques shop in Pasadena where it was picked up by a Hollywood studio set designer to use as a prop on soap operas and movies. "I am happy to have been a part of the painting's voyage to the big screen and back to Hungary," Hempstead said.
The owner of the painting during the decades before Hempstead bought it remains a mystery.
According to Barki, the buyer in the late-1920s was probably Jewish and left Hungary in the run-up to, or during, the second world war.
"After the wars, revolutions, and tumult of the 20th century many Hungarian masterpieces are lost, scattered around the world," he said. Bereny, a leading figure in a pre-first world war avant-garde movement called the Group of Eight, was a friend of Austrian pyschoanalyst Sigmund Freud and held exhibitions in Paris with painter Henri Matisse.
In 1919 he fled to Berlin, where he had a romance with actress Marlene Dietrich.
He painted the now-famous work on his return to Budapest after being granted an amnesty by the government in 1926.


Big bidding for Little piece of history

Robert Bereny's long-lost avant-garde masterpiece, spotted in the kids' filmStuart Little, goes under the hammer in Budapest. Photo: AFP

Key scene with painting on wall

News

World

Missing masterpiece spotted as movie prop in children's film sells for double the reserve


An avant-garde painting lost for nine decades until a Hungarian researcher spotted it being used as a prop in the Hollywood film Stuart Little has sold for more than €200,000 at an auction in Budapest.


Big bidding for Little piece of history

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Missing masterpiece spotted as movie prop in children's film sells for double the reserve

Missing masterpiece spotted as movie prop in children's film sells for double the reserve