7 Stolen Grandma Moses Paintings Suddenly Return

BENNINGTON, Vt. - Two wooden crates that arrived unexpectedly at the Bennington Museum were found to contain seven Grandma Moses paintings that were stolen 14 years ago.

Where the artworks have been all this time - and exactly who sent them back and why - are still a mystery.

"It was someone who honestly loved them and wanted to own them and enjoy them," museum curator Deborah Federhen says. "If they wanted to sell them, they would have broken them up and not kept them as a set of seven but tried to dispose of them one by one."

The brightly colored New England landscapes were stolen in 1984 from the Rose Valley, Pa., home of Margaret Carr shortly after the woman's death. She had bequeathed the paintings to the private Bennington Museum.

The artworks - whose combined value was estimated by the Bennington at $250,000 to $500,000 - were not seen again until they arrived at the museum in February in good shape, still in their original, two-tone painted wooden frames.

Each crate contained a cryptic computer note in bright purple ink and a hard-to-read typeface. Each note, inexplicably signed "Ring Sar," lists the names and dates of the paintings and says: "Please send the attached following for a seven-year anonymous loan" - a reference, perhaps, to the seven-year statute of limitations for prosecuting the transportation of stolen property across state lines.

The Pennsylvania State Police have reopened the investigation. But the museum's attempts to trace the shipper have been unsuccessful. The packages were sent by a shipping company from Quakertown, Pa., but the receipt contained a phony company name and a false fax number.

Grandma Moses, born Anna Mary Robertson, took up painting in her late 70s and lived in Eagle Bridge, N.Y., near Bennington. Carr and her sister became friends with the artist. Grandma Moses died in 1961 at the age of 101.