THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 30, 1994 TAG: 9407300273
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
The earliest known life portrait of Thomas Jefferson, described by his friends as looking nothing like him, was stolen from a Polaroid Corp. studio where it had been sent for reproduction, police said Friday.
The painting had been insured for $500,000 by its owner, said Sgt. Robert O'Toole.
It was owned by Charles Francis Adams of Dover, a sixth-generation descendant of John Adams, the second president of the United States.
Adams had commissioned the 1786 portrait of Jefferson, which was considered a family heirloom, said Caroline Keinath, chief of interpretation at the Adams National Historic Site in Quincy.
``As a historic resource and in its relationship to the family, it's really priceless,'' Keinath said. ``There's no way of replacing something like that.''
The portrait, done by popular 18th century artist Mather Brown, is 28 inches by 36 inches and in a gold-colored frame. It shows Jefferson at age 43 from the waist up, with a classical statue of a woman in the background. The author of the Declaration of Independence is holding papers covered with writing.
The painting recently had been part of an exhibit at Jefferson's estate of Monticello in Virginia that featured 150 of Jefferson's personal belongings.
``It's a real tragedy - it's a beautiful painting and a very important one, historically,'' said Paula Faust, spokeswoman for Monticello. The stolen painting is the earliest of only 15 to 20 life portraits done of Jefferson, she said.
The theft was reported at 6:15 a.m. Friday by Stephen Brown, an employee of Limitless Design Corp., which shares space with Polaroid Museum Replicas on the eighth floor of a warehouse in the city's Marine Industrial Park, O'Toole said.
After 6:30 p.m. Thursday, when the last employee left for the evening, thieves broke into Polaroid's 3-foot by 12-foot metal and cement Moesler safe, apparently with a hammer and chisel, police said.
Brown would not comment on his discovery of the theft. ``Let's leave this to the police,'' he said.
The safe did not have an alarm and no security guards patrolled the eighth floor of the building at night, O'Toole said.
Nothing else was stolen, Polaroid officials said. But police said they also were investigating the thefts of other art objects from the waterfront warehouse.
Adams had loaned the portrait to Monticello for its exhibit commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jefferson's birth in 1743, ``The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello.''
The exhibit closed last December. Monticello's curators sent the portrait to Polaroid on July 18 because they and Adams wanted full-size reproductions, Faust said. The reproductions were finished and the painting was scheduled to be returned to Adams on Monday, said Polaroid spokesman Sam Yanes.
The painter, Mather Brown, lived from 1761 to 1831 and was a Boston native who moved to England in 1781, said Dorinda Evans, an art history professor at Emory University in Atlanta, who wrote a biography of Brown. by CNB