Martha Fuqua, "Renoir Girl," has denounced as "improperly authenticated" a museum's evidence that it owns the long-lost Renoir painting she claims and has asked a judge to dismiss the Baltimore Museum of Art's motion for summary judgment.
For much of the past year, Fuqua, a Virginia driving instructor, and the BMA have been wrangling in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, over who owns "On the Shore of the Seine," a tiny 1879 landscape.
The painting made news in September last year when an anonymous woman — Fuqua — said she had unwittingly purchased the painting at a West Virginia flea market for $7 and was trying to auction it off for as much as $100,000. Days before the auction set for that September, the BMA discovered internal records showing that it had owned the painting until 1951, when it was stolen from its building. The museum says one of its longtime donors, Saidie May, had given it the painting.