Missing Corot's co-owner is convicted crook

2 September 2010

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An empty picture frame.

The whereabouts of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's circa 1857 "Portrait of a Girl" is a mystery. A man says he got drunk and lost the work. The co-owner of the $1.3 million painting has now been identified as an art thief.

Kristyn Trudgeon, who partly owns the work, sued James Carl Haggerty in New York earlier this week. Haggerty was a middleman who had taken the Corot to a Manhattan hotel to sell to London art dealer Offer Waterman.

Waterman was not interested. Haggerty says he then drank too much and lost the painting.

Trudgeon withdrew her suit against Haggerty after she saw a prison mug shot of the artwork's other co-owner, Thomas Doyle.

Apparently, Doyle, who had enlisted Haggerty, is an admitted art thief. He pleaded guilty in 2007 to stealing an $600,000 Edgar Degas sculpture from a collector, and served time in prison for a jewelry crime.

The painting once resided in the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles before being released for sale by a foundation.

Read more at AP

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