Art in the Background: How a Missing Hungarian Painting Was Found in ‘Stuart Little’

In a story straight out of an art historian’s dreams, a long-lost masterpiece painting found an unlikely second life as a prop on the set of a Hollywood movie before being rediscovered and reclaimed from obscurity. The incredible saga of Róbert Berény’s 1927-1928 painting Sleeping Lady with Black Vase is a remarkable tale of art’s resilience and the perseverance of those dedicated to preserving cultural heritage.

The luminous oil on canvas depicts the Hungarian artist’s second wife Eta in a distinctive 1920s hairstyle and blue dress, reclining away from a table with a black vase sitting on it. A quintessential work of the Art Deco era, the portrait exemplified the contemporary French, German, and Russian influences that were shaping European art at that time, according to scholars. After its last public showing in 1928 at the Ernst Museum in Budapest, the painting’s trail went cold. Like so many works of art from that turbulent period, it disappeared, likely acquired by a Jewish family fleeing Hungary before being lost or destroyed in the chaos of World War II.

For decades, “Sleeping Lady with Black Vase” was considered forever lost to the historical record, a missing masterpiece from Berény’s artistic prime. That is until Christmas 2009, when Hungarian art historian Gergely Barki made an astounding rediscovery that would resurrect this lost masterwork.

Barki was watching the family comedy movie Stuart Little (1999) at home with his 3-year-old daughter when a striking image on the wall behind the scene’s set decorations caught his eye. There it was – the unmistakable Sleeping Lady in her distinctive blue dress, just as he had seen her in an old black-and-white photo reproduced from art books. Without recording software at hand, Barki couldn’t pause or replay the scenes with the painting, but it appeared often enough in the film for him to study it and realize it was probably the lost Berény original.

What followed was a two-year journey for Barki to track down the whereabouts of the puzzling movie prop. He fired off dozens of emails to the “Stuart Little” production company and crew members until finally receiving a response from a set decorator confirming that she had purchased the painting years earlier from an antique mall for just $500. The decorator later sold the unassuming “prop” to a private collector after using it on some TV soap opera sets as well.

Barki flew to the United States to view the painting in person and, after removing the frame with a screwdriver borrowed from a hotdog vendor and inspecting the canvas up close, he was able to confirm that it was indeed the authentic Berény masterpiece. In 2014, after its incredible rediscovery story made international headlines, the “Sleeping Lady with Black Vase” painting was finally returned to the auction block, where it sold for an impressive $285,700 to a Hungarian collector.

Due to the publicity surrounding its unusual rediscovery, the “Sleeping Lady with Black Vase” has since been regarded as the most widely known Hungarian painting.