On a steaming August day in 1979, carpenter Larry Ruprecht left the hot-tub shop where he was building a showroom and walked down the alley to the Newcomb-Macklin Co., a picture frame shop at State and Kinzie Streets that, after 108 years, was going out of business.
After several minutes of poking around in the company`s basement, Ruprecht picked out his bargains: a refrigerator and a window fan. He paid $65 to C. Dewey Imig, the white-haired owner of Newcomb-Macklin.
Almost as an afterthought, Ruprecht pointed to several rolled-up paintings leaning against the wall behind a boiler. He asked if Imig wanted the canvases. Imig said, no, go ahead and take them.
Ruprecht took the paintings back to the hot-tub showroom, intending to use them to cover open doorways to control dust raised by workers sand-blasting the brick walls. He stacked the canvases in the basement and forgot about them.
Several months later Ruprecht rediscovered the canvases and slowly unfurled them. One was very large, measuring about seven feet square. The painting depicted a young female adoring a bust of a man, while unbeknownst to her, the man watched from behind a curtain. It appeared to have been folded and the folds had cracked so the painting was reduced to strips. In a corner Ruprecht saw a signature and a date–”Mucha, 1904.”
For most carpenters, the writing would have had no meaning. Ruprecht, however, had graduated with a fine arts degree from Bradley University in Peoria, and he recognized the name as that of Alphonse Mucha, a Bohemian artist who had died in 1939. Mucha is regarded by many as the father of Art Nouveau, a style noted for curving lines mimicking those in nature, a movement that swept the art world at the turn of the century.
Alphonse Mucha`s son, Jiri, showed little interest in his father`s art until the young man was well into his own adult years. This was not surprising inasmuch as Art Nouveau, in the immediate post-war period, was nobody`s favorite and it would be some time before the school of painting referred to as ”le style Mucha” regained its esteem.
After a wartime stint in the Royal Air Force, Jiri returned to Prague, where, in the early 1950s, he served a prison term after being accused by the Communist regime of spying on behalf of the United States.
He was working as a novelist and translator when, in 1958, his mother, Maria, asked him to look into the matter of his father`s estate. Alphonse Mucha`s career as an artist had spanned more than a half century, and now, 20 years after his death, the whereabouts of some of his work was still not known. Jiri began to put the pieces together.
Alphonse Mucha was born July 24, 1860, in the small Moravian town of Ivancice, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He went to Paris in 1887 to work as an illustrator and launched a career that would bring him recognition as a leading figure in the art world.
Mucha was a workaholic. He produced dozens of posters, including nine for the great actress Sarah Bernhardt. He designed furniture and jewelry, as well as bronze entrances to the Paris subway.
In 1902, Mucha began work in his Paris studio on a painting titled
”Petronius and Eunice.” The woman on the canvas was a young slave adoring a bust of her master, while, hidden behind a curtain, the master gazed upon her. The master`s face was a self-portrait of Mucha.
In 1906, Charles R. Crane, a Chicago industrialist and art patron, persuaded Mucha to come to Chicago to deliver a series of lectures at the Chicago Art Institute. It was here that he finished ”Petronius and Eunice,” which by then had been rechristened ”Quo Vadis.”
On one of his occasional return visits to the States, Mucha, in 1920, consigned ”Quo Vadis,” along with 20 other artworks, to the Newcomb-Macklin firm for sale. That Mucha himself considered ”Quo Vadis” to be a serious piece of art is evident in the hefty $10,000 price he assigned it.
Newcomb-Macklin, however, had little luck in selling Mucha`s paintings over the next decade, and when the Depression hit, owner John Suster complained that he couldn`t even give them away. By 1935, Suster had shipped what he figured to be all but two of Mucha`s canvases back to the artist in Prague.
In March, 1939, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. Mucha, a fervent Czech nationalist, was detained for questioning by the Gestapo. On July 14, shortly after he was released, Alphonse Mucha died.
Newcomb-Macklin heard nothing from the Mucha family for nearly 20 years until the arrival of a letter from Jiri, inquiring about any paintings his father may have left.
Imig replied: ”The only paintings that are left here are some large murals that are still in storage and a painting called `The Kiss.”`
Proclaiming the ”murals” impossible to sell, Imig suggested that he be allowed to keep ”The Kiss” to pay for long overdue storage charges.
Mucha responded apologetically and concluded: ”I think you are right in suggesting that you should keep what is left in order to cover somehow your expenses.”
The matter then lay dormant. In the middle 1960s Mucha was commissioned to write a book about his father and began to sort through the numerous boxes of papers. His mother had died in 1959, leaving him and his sister, Jaroslava, heirs to the Mucha estate.
In 1973, Jiri Mucha was in New York for an exhibition of his father`s works. Imig tracked him down and said he had found another painting, titled
”Harmony.” When Jiri came to Chicago to pick it up (there was a $5,000 storage bill), he searched the shop–at Imig`s invitation–for other Mucha works, but apparently missed the corner of the basement where the melancholy painting of slave woman and master was so carelessly stowed. For six more years, ”Quo Vadis” would moulder until Ruprecht chanced upon it.
In 1980, Ruprecht and his wife, Gayle, held a yard sale in preparation for a move from their loft apartment. Gayle Ruprecht later said that the loft was ”full of Larry`s belongings, just things he collected; jukeboxes, just junk and the paintings. This was rolled up and it was really tattered, so I just said we should just get rid of it, throw it out.
”He said, `No, you can`t get throw it out, it`s a Mucha,”` she recalled. ”He said, `I think you should have somebody look at it.”` She called around, but was told that restoration would cost thousands of dollars, a price they could not afford. She located a buyer in Tom Tomc, owner of Fly- By-Nite Gallery, 718 N. Wells St., who bought ”Quo Vadis” for $150.
Tomc took the canvas to his apartment, where, sometime that year, Charles King, an antiques dealer who says he has operated ”out of a shopping bag,”
saw it. ”I hungered for it in my heart,” King says.
King nearly fainted when Tomc proposed a price of $50,000. King said later, ”I didn`t get into it for a while, because 50 G`s, you know, I am not a fancy dealer. I am just a regular junk man in Chicago.”
Over a period of months, King said, he paid Tomc $35,000 in cash and silver objects and obtained the painting. Much of the money was borrowed, King said. He immediately attempted to sell the painting. ”I wanted to sell it quick and high,” King said.
A friend, John Rapparlie, wrote letters on King`s behalf to museums and galleries around the world, asking $700,000 to $800,000 for the painting. They got no takers, King said, because the painting was ”in too lousy a condition to fool with.”
King shopped around for a restorer and settled on Faye Wrubel, a conservator at the Chicago Art Institute. Wrubel was taken aback when she first saw ”Quo Vadis.” ”It was tattered and looked like a sheet that had been rumpled and torn in 12 strips,” she said. ”It was a basket case. It was in as poor condition as I`ve ever seen a painting.”
But, she noted, ”The paint layers were in good condition–it was the canvas support that was severely damaged. It was like resurrecting the dead,” she said.
Wrubel worked on and off for three years to restore ”Quo Vadis,”
painstakingly fusing together each individual thread that had been split apart at the folds. When she finally flipped the painting over, she found that the lines of paint ”matched perfectly.”
At about the same time that Wrubel was beginning her work, Rapparlie wrote a letter to Jiri Mucha, in Czechoslovakia, seeking information about the symbolism of the painting. The decision to write the letter was a fateful one. Jiri became suspicious and hired Chicago attorney John Brezina to ferret out the painting.
Rapparlie was evasive about the whereabouts or even the existence of the painting. Brezina spent several months in detective work before discovering that the painting was undergoing restoration. Eventually he sued Rapparlie and that suit led to King, who then also was sued. The suits claimed the painting belonged to Jiri Mucha.
The dispute fell in the lap of U.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen, and for more than a year Brezina`s and King`s lawyers took statements from Tomc, the Ruprechts and others. The case went to trial last year.
King`s lawyers argued that the Mucha family had abandoned ”Quo Vadis”
and that under the statute of limitations, the five-year for bringing such a lawsuit had expired. Brezina contended, however, that the period did not begin until the painting was taken by Ruprecht and that the lawsuit was brought within five years from that incident.
Aspen agreed and also declared that Mucha had never relinquished his right to ”Quo Vadis” because he could not relinquish something he did not know Newcomb-Macklin still possessed. Aspen ordered the painting turned over to Jiri Mucha (”Quo Vadis” is now in storage in Chicago). In a small victory for King, he ordered Mucha to pay the restoration costs, reimbursing King for $8,000 he had already paid Wrubel on a $16,500 restoration bill.
King says the 1958 letter in which Mucha`s son said Imig could ”keep what is left” supports his position that he, not Jiri Mucha, is entitled to the painting. He believes that Mucha knew ”Quo Vadis” existed in 1958 when Imig wrote about the unsaleable murals, but didn`t pursue it because Art Nouveau objects were ”worthless at that time.” King is sure that in 1982, after Mucha got the letter from Rapparlie and knew that Art Nouveau objects are now treasured by many, Mucha decided to get ”Quo Vadis” back to make money.
”He gave them away in the 1958 letter,” King said. ”This letter is to me a deal. In 1958 Art Nouveau was worthless. It was garbage. Now it is on an up cycle.”
Mucha contends that ”Quo Vadis” is not a mural and that he had no idea that Imig`s reference to unsaleable ”murals” in the 1958 letter was to a painting as valuable as ”Quo Vadis.”
Imig, who has since died, testified in a deposition that he never accepted Jiri Mucha`s offer in the 1958 letter. Further, Imig testified, had he known that ”Quo Vadis” was still at Newcomb-Macklin, he would have turned it over to Mucha because the frame company claimed no ownership interest in it.
King appealed Aspen`s ruling, but on May 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the decision. Mucha was elated. King was devastated.
Speaking from his home in Paris, Jiri Mucha, who has valued the painting at more than $100,000, hailed the appeals court decision. ”It`s a great relief because it (the lawsuit) was a gamble,” Mucha said.
”It was necessary to save this picture for the public and not see it lost somewhere in a third-rate or fourth-rate junk shop. `Quo Vadis` is a most significant painting.”`
King, who believes the painting could be worth as much as $2.4 million in its restored state, has lost his $35,000 investment. Although he could sue Tomc for damages, Tomc is his friend, King says.
In an interview, he said, ”I wouldn`t have gotten anywhere near this
(painting) if I had known what would happen. I had to borrow years of income. I knew the painting would be publicly discovered. Nobody in his right mind would do what I did if he thought this would happen.”
King said he took the chance of buying the painting because he believed it was genuine and because ”the (financial) potential would have set me up. It would have helped me help people I love.”
He paused, his voice cracked and tears began to drip down his cheeks.
”There is no way you can reach that ruling by logic, common sense or law. This was a misapplication of the legal system. They stole it. Everything I`ve earned since age 7 is pledged to the debt of this thing; everything I own. They`ve destroyed me. I have nothing left.”
