[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/The-Young-Mother.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tTwo stolen paintings by American artist Eastman Johnson (1824\u20131906) have been found in Connecticut. Milford auction house Shannon\u2019s Fine Art Auctioneers, which helped recover the works, announced the news on its website.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe paintings, Mary and Her Lamb<\/em> (1877) and The Young Mother<\/em> (ca. 1872\u201373), were stolen from New York galleries Kenneth Lux Gallery and Hirschl & Adler Galleries, respectively, in 1978. Their whereabouts remained unknown for almost 50 years, until they were spotted in an estate collection by antiques dealer Brandon Levine earlier this year.<\/p>\n \n\tLevine, suspecting they were works by Johnson, sent photos of them to Sandra Germain, Shannon\u2019s owner. Following her advice, he consulted the Eastman Johnson online catalog raisonn\u00e9 compiled by Patricia Hills and Abigael MacGibeny. Both paintings were listed as stolen.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter confirming the information with the Art Loss Register, Levine and Germain contacted the family that had inherited the works. After getting their agreement to return the paintings, Germain set about contacting their rightful owners.<\/p>\n \n\tAt Hirschl & Adler, Germain says, \u201cThe owner, Stuart Feld, described the painting as if it had been stolen the day before.\u201d Finding Kenneth Lux\u2019s descendants was more complicated, but Germain was eventually able to connect with Lux\u2019s son, Daniel.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey were thrilled to get [the paintings] back,\u201d said Germain. \u201cThe family was super cooperative with us. It was one of those situations where everybody did the right thing, and that doesn\u2019t always happen.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tA portrait and genre painter, Johnson was known in his day as the American Rembrandt. His work is notable for its realism, as in one of his most famous pieces, A Ride for Liberty\u2013The Fugitive Slaves<\/em>, (ca. 1862), which he claimed to have based on an actual event he witnessed near the Civil War battlefield of Manassas.<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to Germain, the total worth of the recovered works may be over $200,000. Johnson\u2019s Child and Lamb<\/em> (1875), an oil painting of a similar size and subject as Mary and Her Lamb<\/em>, sold at Bonham\u2019s in 2024 for $108,000.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/stolen-eastman-johnson-paintings-recovered-after-50-years-1234796924\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/The-Young-Mother.jpg?w=1024″] Two stolen paintings by American artist Eastman Johnson (1824\u20131906) have been found in Connecticut. Milford auction house Shannon\u2019s Fine Art Auctioneers, which helped recover the works, announced the news on its website. The paintings, Mary and Her Lamb (1877) and The Young Mother (ca. 1872\u201373), were stolen from New York galleries Kenneth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2129360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2129360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2129360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2129360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2129360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}