On 10 January 2014, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Pierre-Auguste Renoir's small 1879 landscape Paysage Bords de Seine rightfully belonged to the Baltimore Museum of Art. The painting had been stolen from the museum in November 1951 during the exhibition From Ingres to Gauguin, then resurfaced in 2012 when Marcia Fuqua tried to sell it through an Alexandria, Virginia auction house and claimed it was a flea-market purchase. The FBI seized the painting after the auction was canceled, and the museum's title was strengthened when the insurer that had paid the 1950s claim transferred title back to the BMA. The January 10 ruling resolved the ownership dispute; the FBI returned the work to the museum later that month.
The ruling turned a sensational flea-market story into a restitution precedent for a long-missing museum painting.
