STOCKHOLM, Sweden Nov 18, 2004 — A long-lost painting by Swedish master Carl Larsson will be auctioned off next week after it was discovered tucked away in a private collection in France for more than a century, an auction house said Thursday. "Boenskoerd," or "Bean Harvest" in English, was completed by Larsson, one of Sweden's best-known painters, in Grez-sur-Loing in France in 1883. Its whereabouts, however, had been uncertain since it was sold in 1884, said Anna-Karin Pusic, an art historian with the Bukowskis Auction House in Stockholm.
Pusic said the current French owner, who inherited the painting from his father in the 1940s, contacted Bukowskis this spring after a friend informed him that the painting was probably valuable.
"He called us and wanted to know whether Carl Larsson was famous in Sweden," Pusic said.
Not surprisingly, Larsson is quite famous in Sweden. The painting is expected to fetch between $440,000 and $580,000 when it is auctioned Tuesday.
The painting depicts a young woman in a flowery French garden putting what appears to be flowers or herbs into a big basket.
Larsson, who was born in 1853, lived in Grez-sur-Loing from 1882-1885, producing several paintings depicting rural life in France. Along with Anders Zorn and Bruno Liljefors, he is considered by most art experts as one of Sweden's greatest painters. He died in January 1919.
Pusic said it was a great surprise that the painting resurfaced so unexpectedly.
"It's fantastic, wonderful," she said. "This kind of Larsson, it's from his greatest period and there are very few of them in private possession."
Source: www.abcnews.go.com
