A Tamayo stolen in Houston, found on a New York street

In 1987, a Houston couple were moving house, and their belongings sat in storage in Houston, Texas. One of the things stored there was a large painting by the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo. At some point it disappeared. Sotheby’s, the auction house, says the theft took place in the fall of that year.

The painting is Tres Personajes, or “Three Characters”. Tamayo made it in 1970, in oil with sand worked into the paint, on a canvas of about 97 by 130 centimetres. The husband, a Houston businessman and collector, bought it at Sotheby’s in New York on 11 May 1977. The New York Times, the BBC and the Associated Press agree that he paid $55,000, as a birthday present for his wife. No outlet names the couple.

The owners told the Houston police and federal authorities. The painting was listed with the International Foundation for Art Research and the Art Loss Register, two databases of stolen art. The sources report no credible leads. The AP and the BBC say the couple offered a reward of $15,000. The BBC says it is not known how the painting went from storage to the street, and no source names a thief. One AP story, repeating a television segment, says the theft was in 1989. Every other source gives 1987. In 2005, August Uribe, a senior vice president at Sotheby’s, showed the missing picture on the PBS programme Antiques Roadshow FYI.

In 2003, Elizabeth Gibson, a writer in New York, was walking to buy coffee. Outside an apartment building at Broadway and 72nd Street, on the Upper West Side, she saw a pile of rubbish bags with a canvas among them. The sources disagree on the month. The New York Times puts it in March. Sotheby’s and The Guardian say November. Gibson told NPR that the doorman said the painting had been put out about 20 minutes earlier. The rubbish truck came about 20 minutes after she took it.

Gibson hung the canvas at home. After some months a friend said it might be valuable. She searched the web for the signature and reached the Antiques Roadshow FYI site, where she learned that the painting was reported stolen. Sotheby’s says that in May 2007 she met Uribe at its New York rooms, and the next day she took him to the painting by cab. Sotheby’s reports that the canvas was in excellent condition and had never been restored. Sotheby’s told the FBI at once. The BBC and the AP said in November 2007 that the FBI was still investigating.

By then the husband had died. His widow, who stayed anonymous, sold the painting through Sotheby’s. It was offered in New York on 20 November 2007, as lot 21 of the Latin American Art sale, with an estimate of $750,000 to $1,000,000. That evening it sold for $1,049,000, as reported, to a private collector bidding by telephone. No source says whether that figure includes the buyer’s premium. Gibson received the $15,000 reward and a share of the price. The share was never published.

The sources do not name the buyer. No source after 22 November 2007 says how the FBI inquiry ended. The painting is now in a private collection.