THE JENNIE FRENCH POTTER, FIVE-MASTED SCHOONER, by S.F. M. Badger, 1901.

 

A Painting Returned and a Painting Still Missing

 

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the return of the stolen OHS painting The Bark Washington, we want to retell the story of our small-town art theft for those OHS members who may not know it and for those who would like a refresher.

 

Back in the 1990’s and early aughts, stolen art seemed to be having a moment. There was the daring theft of 11 masterworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; a Cezanne painting lifted by a rope-propelling, smoke-canister-releasing cat burglar taken from the Ashmolean Museum in London; and a thief nicknamed “Monkey” who used a sledgehammer to gain access to the Van Gogh Museum. And then there was the OHS thief, who, as far as anyone can tell, one day in 2001 simply strolled through the doors of Hallock in a moment of construction confusion, and took off with two paintings and some scrimshaw.

 

Thanks to then-OHS Board President Freddie Wachsberger (current Board Emeritus) and then-Executive Director Courtney Burns, the stolen pieces were entered in the FBI’s National Stolen Art registry. In the Spring of 2015 OHS Collections Manager Amy Folk received a call from an agent explaining that, after nearly 15 years, The Bark Washington had been located. An unidentified man had purchased the painting for a few hundred dollars at an East Marion antiques shop years before and whilst researching it on the internet discovered it was on the FBI’s list. Subsequently, he returned the painting and it once again graces the walls of OHS. An almost happy ending…

 

The second painting stolen still waits to be recovered. The Jennie Potter French was a grand five-masted schooner, 260 feet long, that carried bulk up and down the East Coast. It was named after Orient resident Jennie Potter, the wife of the boat captain’s younger brother. Captain Joseph Potter resided on Village Lane and was at the helm when the boat sank off the coast of Cape Cod in 1909. There were no casualties but the boat was lost. Thankfully it was memorialized by the prolific ship portraitist S.F.M. Badger (1873-1919) before its demise. The painting remains on the FBI’s Stolen Art Registry, and needless to say, OHS looks forward to one day welcoming it back.