BUCHAREST, Romania — A Romanian museum is analyzing ashes found in a stove to see if they are the remains of seven paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Monet and others that were stolen Oct. 17 from the Netherlands, an official said Tuesday.
Prosecutor spokeswoman Gabriela Chiru told The Associated Press that Romania’s National History Museum is examining the ashes found in the stove of Olga Dogaru. She is the mother of Radu Dogaru, the alleged ringleader and one of three Romanian suspects charged with stealing the paintings valued at tens of millions from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal gallery in a brazen daytime heist.
Dogaru told investigators she buried the art in an abandoned house and then in a cemetery in the village of Caracliu after her son’s arrest in January. She said she later dug them up and burned them in February after police began searching the village for the stolen works.
It could take months for the results of the tests to be known.
The stolen paintings were: Pablo Picasso’s 1971 “Harlequin Head”; Claude Monet’s 1901 “Waterloo Bridge, London” and “Charing Cross Bridge, London”; Henri Matisse’s 1919 “Reading Girl in White and Yellow”; Paul Gauguin’s 1898 “Girl in Front of Open Window”; Meyer de Haan’s “Self-Portrait,” around 1890; and Lucian Freud’s 2002 work “Woman with Eyes Closed.”
