WWJD?

This morning I had an appointment to look at Kayla and Brian Roughton's amazing family compound next door to their art gallery.  

Take a look inside. You'll never believe what I found.

Meet the gracious Kayla Roughton, who showed me around, along with Laura Lee Clark, who worked on the interiors.

Here's how my discovery unfolded: I was snapping away inside the house with my camera at furniture when Kayla started talking about this painting in her dining room and how the New York Times had called about it, and then Channel 11 had come out and filmed it, and, most recently, Inside Edition wanted an interview, but Brian turned them down, she said, when he found out they were a TV tabloid.

So the former investigative journalist in me snapped to attention. Rather, my camera snapped to attention.

Here's the painting. 

It's beautiful, no?

Notre-Dame des Anges, by William Adolphe Bouguereau, was painted in 1889, and is at the center of a delicious lawsuit brought by a group of Catholic nuns in New York state, who had originally owned the painting. 

According to the suit, the nuns sold it to an art dealer in New York for $450,000 unaware that it was worth millions. The nuns are now suing the dealer, claiming he misrepresented the appraisal he received from Sotheby's in order to buy it for a fraction of its true worth. Brian Roughton, who subsequently bought the painting for $2 million from another dealer, is now selling it for $5 million. He is not involved in the suit.

It was an exciting morning. I love great art, and I love a great controversy even more.