Boy finds £600,000 masterpiece

A boy of 10 is the toast of the art world today after discovering a long-lost Victorian painting worth up to £600,000 hanging above a bookcase in his school library.

Bingham Bryant was so enthralled by the grimy, unframed, varnishsoured picture that he rushed home from school in Old Lyme, in the US state of Connecticut, and urged his father to investigate.

Christopher Bryant, a dealer who specialises in tracking down 18th and 19th century military material, agreed to take a look at the sorrylooking painting depicting Pluto, lord of the underworld, and two rearing black stallions emerging from Hades to abduct Persephone, Greek goddess of spring.

Together, father and son discovered that the work, The Fate Of Persephone, was by leading British painter Walter Crane and had last been heard of in Germany in 1923.

Specialists confirmed the pair's findings and now the 1878 painting by the Liverpool-born Pre-Raphaelite artist is estimated at between £400,000 and £600,000. It will be put up for auction at Christie's in London on 12 June.

Bingham became transfixed by the work during a class in the library. He said: "I couldn't keep my eyes off the picture. It's been propped above the bookcase behind the librarian's desk forever and I told my dad that he had to come and see it.

"There was something about it - and I suspected it might be very valuable." His father added: "It's something that runs in the family - finding things. But this is our most amazing find yet. Bingham may or may not be a dealer in the making, but he's certainly developed a very good eye."

In the year it was painted Crane - who lived from 1845 to 1915 - showed it at the Grosvenor Gallery summer exhibition where it was much admired by fellow Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones.

Crane, a prolific designer of wallpaper, textiles and ceramics, illustrated children's books, including Grimm's Fairy Tales. In his paintings he was influenced by Botticelli.

The work resurfaced in Germany in 1902 but disappeared after being sold to a Berlin dealer in 1923. After poring over the school's history Mr Bryant and son found that Brian Hooker, best known for his translation of Cyrano de Bergerac, had bought the painting. He wanted to hang the work in a house he was hoping to build.

But Hooker, a professor at Yale, never achieved his dream and in around 1935 he loaned the picture to Old Lyme Centre School. When he died in 1946, aged 66, it was valued at $200.

Mr Bryant found Hooker's daughters, now octogenarians, who are the painting's legal heirs. He explained the story to them and they agreed to sell. "The sisters, who are not well off, were completely flabbergasted," said Mr Bryant. "They had forgotten all about the painting since seeing it in their father's apartment in New York in the Twenties."

Angus Wilkie, consultant to Christie's, said today: "The Fate of Persephone, untraced for nearly 80 years, has been rescued from obscurity."