A long lost painting of former first lady Jackie Kennedy is at the heart of a legal battle as her relatives dight to get the portrait back.
Squirreled away in the East Hamptons for nearly 60 years, the forgotten work is believed to have been stolen from Grey Gardens, the notorious haunt of Jackie’s aunt and cousin, ‘Big Edie’ Beale and her daughter ‘Little Edie.
Their eccentric life of squalor and delusion was later immortalized in a documentary filmed in 1975, according to The New York Post.
Commissioned by Jackie’s father in 1950, Irwin Hoffman’s painting shows a then 19-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier (pictured)
Commissioned by Jackie’s father in 1950, Irwin Hoffman’s painting shows a then 19-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier from the neck up, smartly dressed with fragile eyes staring cleverly out from the framed canvas.
Jackie’s father, John Vernou Bouvier III, commissioned the painting and bequeathed it to his sister Big Edie.
Bouvier had his daughter immortalized in oils shortly after she fell in a horse-riding accident and spent several days unconscious, the Post reports.
A scar from the incident can be seen in the portrait, the Post notes.
The painting may have been stolen during a rare outing for Big Edie and her daughter in 1968.
Upon their returned, they discover they’d been robbed of $15,000 worth of property, New York Magazine reported in 1972.
The mother-daughter duo, however, were reluctant to call the authorities as they were tangled in a long-running dispute with the police over the downtrodden state of their house.
John Bouvier stands with his wife and daughter Jaqueline at the Sixth Annual Horse Show of the Southampton Riding and Hunt Club on Long Island (Pictured mid 1930s)
‘Little’ Edith Bouvier Beale (1917 – 2002), a cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, at home with her mother, ‘Big Edie’ (1896 – 1977), in Grey Gardens
Visitors outside Grey Gardens, home of Edith Bouvier Beale on 3 West End Ave in Georgica Pond, East Hampton, New York
Big Edie died a few year later in 1977, with the once-grand 1897 estate nearly in complete disrepair and occupied by an army of feral cats and filth.
Before her own death in 2002, Little Edie urged her nephew, Bouvier Beale Jr., and his wife, Eva, to recover the family’s stolen items, according to the Post.
Two years later, Eva Beale said that she spotted a painting of Jackie at the Wallace Gallery in East Hampton.
Before her own death in 2002, Little Edie (pictured) urged her nephew, Bouvier Beale Jr., and his wife, Eva, to recover the family’s stolen items
But the owner of the portrait, Terry Wallace, refused to identify where he purchased the painting from.
The Beales reignited their efforts to retrieve the painting in 2016, the Post reported, after they discovered a 1998 Hamptons Magazine article about the portrait in Little Edie’s belongings.
In court documents, lawyer Megan Noh, who represented Little Edie’s estate, says the family is ‘seeking justice and wants to reclaim this important piece of its legacy.’
Wallace remains skeptical of the Beale’s family claim.
‘I got the painting 30 years ago from a very reputable art and antiques dealer. I can’t give you the name but I can only tell you they were reputable. They were in the Hamptons and the painting came with a very good title. It has a very good provenance,’ Wallace told The Post.
When asked if the Beale family was in the chain of ownership, Wallace said, ‘It didn’t come from those people,’ adding that he wouldn’t put his reputation at risk over one painting.
‘If the painting was stolen I would cheerfully and gladly return it to the right owner, but that’s not the case. The Beale family insist they own this painting but there’s no evidence of that,’ Wallace said.
‘I’ve helped the FBI solve cases,’ he boasted. ‘I don’t think they would come to me if I were a dishonest person. … If someone came to me with the proof I would turn the painting over to them because I have a responsibility. I’m not interested in dealing in any stolen merchandise.’
Wallace claims the painting isn’t ‘that valuable’ and wouldn’t guess its market value.
‘I think they should have come to me and just tried to buy the painting from me. They tried to steal it now. That’s how I think of it,’ he added.
Eva Beale and Bouvier Beale attend Frances Hayward Hosts a Celebration of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Maysles’ Documentary July 2006