FINDERS KEEPERS

“Renoir Girl” Identified

Found stolen painting at flea market.

The woman who claimed to have stumbled upon a Renoir painting in a $7 box of trinkets at a Virginia flea market has been revealed to be Marcia “Martha” Fuqua, a former PE teacher who runs a driving school. She had to reveal her name because she’s fighting with the FBI for ownership of the painting, which turns out to have been stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951. It’s still unclear who stole the painting and how it ended up at a flea market, if Fuqua’s account holds up. It turns out Fuqua may have more artistic knowledge than she suggested—her mother was an artist who specialized in reproducing art, including Renoirs—and her brother initially told The Washington Post that she’d found it in their mother’s studio.