A story that seems more like a sequel to the popular movie “National Treasure” has ended with a stolen historic Boston statue presumed destroyed more than half a century ago instead being returned to the New England city after it was discovered on display some 600 miles away at an art museum in Virginia.
As it is readied for a return to Boston, the “Wounded Indian,” a beautiful statue carved out of white marble harvested from Vermont, brings together fabled American revolutionist Paul Revere, the FBI, a legendary American car maker, and an eccentric New York art collector who inspired an art forger, a poverty-stricken artist who went mad and died at a young age, along with a modern-day law firm as rare as the artifacts it has helped recover.
“It is indeed quite a story,” attorney Greg Werkheiser, a founding partner of the Cultural Heritage Partners, told The Epoch Times.
In addition to paintings looted by the Nazis, the Virginia-based practice has helped recover a myriad of artifacts stolen from Native American burial grounds around the country.
When it got involved in the Boston sculpture case, it had already been discovered at the Chrysler Museum, named after automaker giant Walter Chrysler. The Norfolk-based Museum of Fine Arts adopted Chrysler’s namesake after he donated his rare collection to it in 1971.
How it landed there remains a mystery, with records of whoever pulled off the heist conveniently destroyed in a fire. Mr. Werkheiser speculates that it was a moving company or at least a group posing as one.
The FBI’s Art Crime Team, a unit of the federal agency with its own real-life and unsung adventurous tales, won’t say. It released a statement to The Epoch Times, saying only it was proud to be a part of its return to Boston.
“Works of art hold a special place in our society, and FBI Boston is proud to have been able to help facilitate the return of this 19th century statue to its rightful owner,“ FBI spokeswoman Kristen Setera said in a released statement to The Epoch Times. ”Beyond this, we’re going to decline further comment.”
Among its most recent and intriguing recoveries includes a five-century-old letter signed by Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes. Last month, the FBI returned the letter, penned in 1527 by the explorer, to Mexico’s national archives after it was discovered at a Massachusetts auction house.
Aiding in the recovery of the Boston statue was Paul Revere III, the great great great great grandson of well-known American patriot Paul Revere.
It was the famous patriot, who has his own impressive statue in Boston, that founded the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (MCMA), where the Indian statue originally roosted.
Today, the contemporary Revere, who is also a practicing attorney, serves as a trustee of the organization.
He told The Epoch Times that “it’s been a bit of battle” to get the statue back after learning it still existed.
The falsely-presumed destroyed statue was among hundreds of rarities housed in the MCMA’s sprawling Mechanic Hall, located in an area of Boston now occupied by the city’s famous Prudential Tower and about a two-mile walk from the fabled bronze of Paul Revere on his legendary 1775 Midnight Ride.
Its collection was so rare that it often loaned pieces to the Smithsonian Institution.
In 1958, after the building fell into disrepair, the financially-strained MCMA decided to sell off the building and sell and/or donate everything in it.
During the move, the group’s building manager, according to Mr. Revere, was told by movers that the six-foot-long “Wounded Indian” statue was destroyed and that they had already thrown away its remains.
“We obviously now know that was in fact not the case,” said Mr. Revere, “someone somehow made up off with a whole statue.”
Unfortunately, records about the movers were lost when the building where they were being stored was destroyed in a fire.
It was a researcher working on an unrelated project that unwittingly discovered the statue at Chrysler Museum in pristine condition 41 years later in 1991.
She had only just been at the Virginia museum a few days earlier when she happened on pictures in a file at the MCMA on the “Wounded Indian”.
The Chrysler Museum did not respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times.
According to records provided to The Epoch Times, the museum has known since 1991 that it had the MCMA statue.
Museum curator Nichols Clark, who left Chrysler in 2014, even made an internal file on it.
According to those records, “Wounded Indian” was among several pieces purchased from a New York art collector named James “Jimmy” Ricau in 1967.
Mr. Ricau died in 1993, just a few years after the “Wounded Indian” was discovered at the Chrysler Museum.
Plot Thickens
Mr. Ricau’s Hudson River home in Piedmont is described in publications as once cluttered with noteworthy art from around the world.Ken Perenyi, dubbed the “most prolific art forger in history,” named Mr. Ricau as a mentor who “wanted to make him the best American Old Masters forger in the world."
Art collector Jimmy Ricau's Hudson River house in August 2023. It once housed the art collector's collections, including a stolen Boston statue. Courtesy of Ken Perenyi
Mr. Perenyi admitted he dodged convictions because the statute of limitations to charge him ran out.
The 77-year-old, who now sells original productions or what he calls “high-end fakes” to some very elite clients around the globe, told The Epoch Times that if he “had to lay odds, he doesn’t believe Mr. Ricau was involved in the theft of the Boston statue.
“Jimmy was a scoundrel,” he said, “but he didn’t need to steal artwork.” According to Mr. Perenyi, Mr. Ricau was a bomber pilot in World War II and was part of recovery efforts for lost and stolen artwork in the post-war years.
Later as a civilian, he said Mr. Ricau often talked about finding rare treasures at roadside sales or in old buildings being torn down.
Mr. Ricau once told him about an original James Bard steamship painting he bought at a junk shop for $2 while traveling through Mobile, Alabama. Bard paintings have sold for $200,000 at antique auctions.
Mr. Perenyi theorized that someone else stole the “Wounded Indian” and sold it to an unsuspecting Mr. Ricau.
In his book ”A Marble Quarry: The James H. Ricau Collection of American Sculpture at the Chrysler Museum of Art,“ Mr. Clark described Mr. Ricau as being motivated by the ”excitement of the chase“ with ”little concern for documentation.”
Mr. Clark also noted that the museum failed to ask Mr. Ricau for provenance documents of the “Wounded Indian”. Provenance documents authenticate art, its origin, and sale history.
According to information obtained by Mr. Werkheiser, Mr. Ricau told the Chrysler Museum he acquired it from an antique dealer in New York, but an investigation involving the FBI Arts Crime unit concluded that it was a lie and that the dealer’s denial he ever had any dealings with Mr. Ricau was proven to be true.
Mr. Clark, who now works as the founding director of the Ashley Bryan Center in Islesford, Maine, and was a staff lecturer for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, told The Epoch Times “that he did his due diligence” at the time and had “no way of knowing who the statue originally belonged to.”
He said he had “no more to add to the story” and noted that he did his “research more than 30 years ago.”
When the “Wounded Indian” was discovered at the Chrysler Museum, it first denied having it and then claimed that MCMA’s must have been a copy. Mr. Revere quoted his father’s words in response to the claim: “It’s the stuff that would make your grass grow green,” he said.
For 25 years, the museum and Boston group feuded over the statue until recently, when they agreed it would be returned to MCMA.
That is expected to happen sometime in August, a journey that will cost the group $30,000 in crating and shipping fees.
Final Twist
A final twist in the story of the Boston statue is its beginnings.The “Wounded Indian” was crafted by Boston sculptor Peter Stephenson in 1850. Originally a watchmaker in Buffalo, New York, Stephenson is best known for his hand-crafted cameos and busts.
His “Wounded Indian” is described by Arts & Culture as “one of the most beautiful and affecting works of American neoclassical sculpture.”
A view of the details that sculptor Peter Stephenson put into his "Wounded Indian" statue. Courtesy of Cultural Heritage Partners
It depicts a fallen Native American warrior clutching an arrow that appears to be embedded in his upper leg near his knee.
According to the organization, works by Stephenson are very rare.
Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see his artwork reach its notoriety.
Following his brief stint as a sculptor, Stephenson died in 1861 at age 37 after going insane. He died in a mental health hospital where he had been committed.
In memoirs acquired by the American Antiquarian Organization, Stephenson spoke about the hard work of an artist.
“I do not complain; the way to make up for hard luck is to work more industriously. I have never received a lesson from any one, nor a cent of money that the sweat of my brow did not earn,“ Stephenson wrote just three years after he sculpted what is now his legendary ”Wounded Indian” statue.
