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Computer archive helps find stolen art |
The request was simple enough: Lloyd's underwriters had been approached to insure the movement of seven paintings, including one by Cezanne, from Russia to London for valuation and sale.
So Lloyd's contacted the Art Loss Register, a small private company in London whose computer archive lists 180,000 items ranging from sculpture and silver to textiles, books, stamps and vehicles -- and many of the great art works stolen or missing around the world.
What the insurance company discovered in 1999 was that the works, including Cezanne's "Fruit and Jug," had been stolen in 1978 from the home of American collector Michael Bakwin in Massachusetts.
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