'STUART LITTLE' PAINTING BRINGS $285,700

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" was sold for over 200,000 euros Saturday at an auction in Budapest.

The painting "Sleeping Lady with Black Vase", by Robert Bereny (1887-1953), fetched a price of 229,500 euros ($285,700), more than doubling its reserve price of around 110,000 euros.

Staff at the Virag Judit auction house told AFP that the buyer was an unnamed private Hungarian collector, and that the sale price exceeded expectations.

"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.

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.

To read the complete article, see:
Missing artwork rediscovered in "Stuart Little" sells for over 200,000 euros at auction (http://artdaily.com/news/75029/Missing-artwork-rediscovered-in--Stuart-Little--sells-for-over-200-000-euros-at-auction#.VI2n3isVhYE)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
HOW STUART LITTLE RESCUED A LOST PAINTING (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n49a37.html)

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