Two paintings, by French artists Paul Gauguin and Pierre Bonnard, thought to be worth millions, have been hanging on a Fiat car worker’s walls for the past 40 years, The Guardian reports. The paintings were bought by the worker in 1975 for the equivalent of £300, from an auction of lost property organised by the Italian national railway in Turin,
Stolen in London in 1970, reportedly from the widower of a daughter of one of the Marks & Spencer co-founders, the paintings were unveiled on Wednesday (2 April) at the Italian culture ministry in Rome. It wasn’t until last year that the purchaser realised who the artists of his paintings were, when his son noticed a resemblance between one of paintings and a picture of a painting by Gauguin, seen in a book.
The works were most likely taken by the thieves by train from Paris to Turin, and later abandoned on board, possibly during border checks. Anonymous and unclaimed, they then formed part of the lost property collection that was subsequently sold in 1975.
