Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer, The Boating Party, a/k/a Canal, oil on canvas, 25 in. x 30 in., signed lower right

4 SEPTEMBER 2020. Art Recovery International has recovered a painting by American Impressionist, Robert Spencer entitled The Boating Party which had been stolen from Tennis Hall of Famer and gallerist, Gene Mako in 1995.

A native of Hungary, Constantine “Gene” Mako learned to play tennis in Southern California where he became one of the elite players to take to the tennis courts in the 1930s.

Known for his fierce serve and powerful smashes, Mako won doubles championships at the United States Open and Wimbledon before shoulder injuries affected his career. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1973 and the USC Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999. After his playing career, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, owned a tennis court construction business, and became an art dealer.

In the mid-1990s, Mako intended to donate his entire art collection of over 800 paintings to his hometown of Culver City, California when, during inventory, he discovered a number of paintings went missing from two of his storage facilities.  A police report was filed with the Los Angeles Police Department who suspected that the paintings were stolen by someone who knew Mako and took advantage of him. No arrests were made.

Following the theft, the stolen paintings were recorded on the newly created LAPD Art Theft Detail database of stolen works of art in 1995 and cross-registered with the non-profit Artive Database in 2015 (www.artive.org). 

In November 2019, a provenance researcher working for Art Recovery International located The Boating Party at a museum exhibition in Buckingham Township, Pennsylvania. Art Recovery, representing Mako’s insurer, notified the LAPD and coordinated the recovery effort. The painting was eventually seized and only recently returned to the Mako family estate via their insurance company.

Attorney Christopher A. Marinello, CEO of Art Recovery International credits LAPD Detective Mel Vergara who, working with Pennsylvania and New Jersey law enforcement, assisted in the recovery of the painting: “It’s encouraging to know that despite a worldwide pandemic, nationwide protests, and local wildfires, art theft is taken seriously by the LAPD, one of the first law enforcement agencies to create an Art Theft Detail.  27 years later, they are still going strong”