Renoir bought at a flea market for $7 must go back

[Hum]

A Renoir painting finished in the 1800s, loaned to a museum, reported stolen in 1951, then bought at a flea market in 2010 has to be returned to the museum, a judge ruled Friday.

The story -- and the painting -- date back to 1879, when impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted "Paysage Bords De Seine," or "Landscape on the Banks of the Seine," which was believed to be for his mistress.

It was later purchased by the Paris art gallery Bernheim-Jeune. Then, in 1926, Herbert L. May, a Renoir collector, bought it from the Paris gallery. In 1937, May's ex-wife, Saidie May, loaned the painting to the Baltimore Museum of Art, which reported it stolen in 1951.

Fast-forward nearly 60 years to a flea market in West Virginia, where a Virginia woman was attracted to a nondescript box holding the painting, along with items like a Paul Bunyan doll and a plastic cow. She paid $7 for the box.

The woman took the painting to the Potomack Company, an Auction House in Alexandria, Virginia, to ask about its value.

A Potomack Company specialist thought it might be an original, and further investigation by the National Gallery of Art in Washington and confirmation by a Renoir expert confirmed the hunch. The painting is valued between $75,000 and $100,000.

The whereabouts of the painting during the six decades it was missing remain unknown.

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[Torolol]

no compensation?

should the museum got the painting back, shouldn't they must also pay the royalties to Herbert L. May inheritor as well?