Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 30, 1994 TAG: 9408020035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium
The painting recently had been part of an exhibit at Jefferson's Monticello estate near Charlottesville, Va. The exhibit featured 150 of Jefferson's personal belongings.
The stolen painting was insured for $500,000 by its owner, said Sgt. Robert O'Toole.
It was owned by Charles Francis Adams, of Dover, Mass., a sixth-generation descendant of John Adams, the second president of the United States.
Adams had commissioned the 1786 portrait of Jefferson, which was considered a family heirloom, said Caroline Keinath, chief of interpretation at the Adams National Historic Site in Quincy.
``As a historic resource and in its relationship to the family, it's really priceless,'' Keinath said. ``There's no way of replacing something like that.''
The portrait, done by popular 18th century artist Mather Brown, is 28 inches by 36 inches and in a gold-colored frame.
It shows Jefferson at age 43 from the waist up, with a classical statue of a woman in the background. The author of the Declaration of Independence is holding papers covered with writing.
The theft was reported at 6:15 a.m. Friday by Stephen Brown, an employee of Limitless Design Corp., which shares space with Polaroid Museum Replicas on the eighth floor of a warehouse in Boston's Marine Industrial Park, O'Toole said.
Sometime after 6:30 p.m. Thursday, when the last employee left for the evening, thieves broke into Polaroid's 3-foot-by-12-foot metal and cement safe, apparently with a hammer and chisel, police said.
Brown would not comment on his discovery of the theft. ``Let's leave this to the police,'' he said.
The safe did not have an alarm and no security guards patrolled the eighth floor of the building at night, O'Toole said.
Nothing else was stolen, Polaroid officials said. But police said they also were investigating the thefts of other art objects from the waterfront warehouse. O'Toole would not give details.
Adams had loaned the portrait to Monticello for its ``The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello'' exhibit, which commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jefferson's birth in 1743.
The exhibit closed in December. Monticello's curators sent the portrait to Polaroid on July 18 because they wanted full-size reproductions before returning the painting to Adams, said Polaroid spokesman Sam Yanes. The reproductions were finished and the painting was scheduled for return on Monday, he said.
Telephone calls to Adams' home in suburban Boston went unanswered.
Susan Stein, curator at Monticello, had not heard of the theft when contacted Friday. ``My heart is pounding,'' she said.
Later Friday, Monticello officials issued a statement saying they were ``devastated'' by the theft.
Painter Mather Brown was a descendant of the family of famous religious writer Cotton Mather. Brown was a Boston native who moved to England in 1781, said Dorinda Evans, an art history professor at Emory University in Atlanta, who wrote a biography of Brown.
In 1786, Jefferson, then ambassador to France, visited London to meet with John Adams, Evans said. Jefferson paid Brown 10 pounds for the portrait.
Adams liked the painting of Jefferson so much he asked Brown to paint a copy. Jefferson returned to Paris, leaving the work behind so Brown could copy it for Adams. The copy, completed in 1788, cost Adams 6 pounds, 6 pence.
Only the portrait in Adams' possession survived beyond Jefferson's lifetime, but art historians disagree on whether the life study or the copy remained with Adams and was passed down through his family.
by CNB