The painting is 95.3 x 63.5 cm. It was stolen in Houghton Hall in 1992 and since then is considered as disappeared. Its value is estimated at around eight million dollars.
Jean-Baptiste Oudry was born on March 17, 1686 in Paris. His father was a painter and art dealer. Oudry’s works of art are attributed to the Rococo, which has developed from the late Baroque. Oudry became known as court painter to Louis XV, he died of a stroke in 1755. Oudry produced mainly portraits, but devoted his creative life and the still life with fruit and animal painting. His painting “The White Duck” was part of the Walpole collection, which was exhibited at the country house Houghton Hall.
It was stolen from Houghton Hall in 1992 and since then is considered as disappeared. Its value is estimated at over eight million dollars. The theft of this painting on millennium night was carried out by a burglar who created a smokescreen to foil security cameras. With the noise of his break-in masked by celebratory fireworks, the burglar cut a hole in the roof of the Ashmolean and dropped down a rope ladder into the gallery.
Having set off a smoke canister, he used a small fan to spread the smoke and obscure the view of the gallery’s closed-circuit cameras before cutting the painting out of its frame and escaping. Some art investigators believe that the work was quickly passed into the hands of a Gypsy gang based in the region who ‘laid it down’. According to english newspaper “The Guardian”, the problem for thieves is that major works of art are very difficult to sell, as their notoriety makes them hard to launder. Instead, stolen paintings are often used as collateral for drug deals or used to raise fraudulent loans from banks.
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