Sheldon Museum of Art Main Content

News

The mystery of a missing painting

Detail of Walt Kuhn's painting "Apples in Wooden Boat."

During routine examination of Walt Kuhn's Apples in Wooden Boat at the Gerald R. Ford Conservation Center in Omaha, an important discovery was made—the title of a missing work by Kuhn, Young Pines Among Rocks, had been penned on the back of the stretcher.

Lincoln's Bryan Medical Center became a collaborator in the search for the missing landscape, offering X-radiography which provided enough information on the comparative density of the pigments used by the artist to confirm the presence of a second composition.


Walt Kuhn
New York, NY 1877–White Plains, NY 1949
Apples in Wooden Boat
Oil on canvas, 1938
24 1/2 × 29 3/8 inches
Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust, H-203.1940