There is nothing quite as transfixing as an art heist.
It’s even more so when set in the former rice plantation-turned-hunting estate of a celebrated Wall Street baron. And it involves the art collection of his intrepid, equestrian daughter Belle. What’s more, among the prized works that were stolen were prints by John James Audubon. And the coup de grace: The dastardly deed has all the indications of an inside job.
This whodunit extraordinaire happened at Hobcaw Barony, the 16,000-acre estate near Georgetown on a spit of land at the mouth of Winyah Bay.
Today it is owned by The Belle W. Baruch Foundation, a private nonprofit foundation established as a trust at her death in 1964. The foundation recently announced that the recovered seven Audubon prints purchased in the 1930s by Belle Baruch are now on public view in its Discovery Center through March.
Seeing the slim, but storied exhibition offers a fine excuse for a jaunt to Georgetown. It’s a drive that promises the sort of sweeping, marsh-laden vistas that confirm the reasons why we call the Lowcountry home.
The trip also provides a perfect entrée into the singular proposition that is Hobcaw Barony. In the early 1900s, Camden native and millionaire Bernard Baruch, aka the Wolf of Wall Street, opted to purchase his significant slice of Carolina paradise.