The Cézanne taken from a Stockbridge house

Over Memorial Day weekend in May 1978, someone entered the house of Michael Bakwin in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and took seven paintings. The Boston Globe Magazine reports that the house was empty except for a housekeeper who fed the pets. It had no alarm, and the family kept a spare key under a statue on the front steps. The US Attorney later called it the largest burglary from a private home in the history of Massachusetts.

The most valuable work was Paul Cézanne’s Bouilloire et fruits, a still life of a pewter kettle, apples, oranges, a pear and a lemon on a white cloth. It is an oil on canvas, 48.6 by 60 centimetres, painted about 1888 to 1890. Christie’s provenance traces it from the Paris collector Baron Denys Cochin, through the dealers Durand-Ruel and Paul Cassirer, to the dealer Justin K. Thannhauser in 1952. By 1955 it belonged to Harry and Ruth Bakwin, New York paediatricians, and it passed to their son Michael. The Globe Magazine dates their purchase to 1963 instead. The other six were two by Chaim Soutine, one by Maurice Utrillo, one by Maurice de Vlaminck and two by Jean Jansem.

The US Attorney names David Colvin, a Pittsfield gambler, as the alleged thief. He was never charged. The Globe reports that he showed the paintings to his lawyer, Robert Mardirosian, and left them in his attic. Colvin was shot dead in 1979. Mardirosian, a former assistant district attorney, kept the paintings near Boston until 1988. He then moved them abroad, in the end to a Swiss bank vault. A Panamanian shell company hid his name, and an intermediary asked for money: the US Attorney says a $1 million finder’s fee, the FBI says $15 million.

In 1999 a Lloyd’s of London agent asked the Art Loss Register, a London database of stolen art, about insuring the painting’s shipment from Russia to England. The register’s records showed it was stolen. Sources differ on the date, December 1998 or January 1999. The register then brokered a swap: the holder handed over the Cézanne, and Bakwin gave up his claims to the other six. The US Attorney dates the deal 15 October 1999, and the Globe Magazine dates the handover in Geneva 25 October. The register’s chairman, Julian Radcliffe, told The New York Times that no arrest was possible because the seven-year limit had expired.

The Bakwins sold it. At Sotheby’s in London on 7 December 1999, lot 31, it sold for 18,151,500 pounds, which The Art Newspaper converts to $29,319,170. The sources do not say whether this includes the buyer’s premium. The buyer was unnamed then. The Boston Globe reported in 2019 that it was the publisher S.I. Newhouse.

On 18 August 2008 a federal jury in Boston convicted Mardirosian of possessing the other six. The Cézanne was not in the charge, since the time limit had passed. Chief Judge Mark Wolf, who called him a “glorified fence”, sentenced him in 2008 to seven years. The US Attorney says November and the ABA Journal says December. On 14 April 2010 the First Circuit court upheld the verdict and held the Geneva agreement void, since it was in effect a ransom for the owner’s own property. The last two paintings went back to Bakwin on 17 November 2010. The Globe reports he left prison in 2014.

Newhouse’s collection offered the Cézanne at Christie’s in New York on 13 May 2019, as lot 18 A. An anonymous telephone buyer paid $59,295,000, including the buyer’s premium. The hammer price was $52 million. It is now with a private collector, unnamed.