Mystery surrounds William M V Kingsland art collection

A vintage mystery is unravelling in New York. Who was William M V Kingsland and why, on his death two years ago, was his apartment found to be stacked to the ceilings with some 300 valuable works of art, including pieces by Pablo Picasso (such as 'Tete de Femme', right) Alberto Giacometti ( 'Tete de Diego', left) and Giorgio Morandi?

Kingsland was a mysterious man. He called himself a genealogist and a writer on art and he was a reasonably well-known figure in the art world and in Upper East Side high society. He suggested that he had once been married to a member of the defunct French royal family, had been to Harvard, that his middle initials stood for Milliken and Vanderbilt and that he lived on Fifth Avenue.

But when he died, leaving no will, his life began to unravel. The FBI has now appealed for anyone who may have had paintings or sculptures stolen in the past 40 years to come forward as it has gradually emerged that many of the pieces found in his apartment – not on Fifth Avenue – may not have been Kingsland's at all.

Alarm bells first rang when a gallery owner bought a minor British Old Master from Kingsland’s collection - a portrait by John Singleton Copley of the Second Earl of Bessborough - for $85,000. Investigating its provenance, he found that it had been stolen from Harvard University in 1971. Then the sale of a small still-life by Morandi in London for $600,000 had to be unstitched when it too was discovered to have been stolen… and so it went on and on. The FBI believes that at least 137 of the works were not legitimately Kingsland’s.

In one twist, two works by Picasso, valued at £30,000 each, were being taken from his apartment to Christie’s in London when they were pinched by removal men. But it turned out they had been stolen before, from a New York Gallery in 1967.

As for Kingsland himself, it turns out that he was born in 1943 to Jewish refugees in the Bronx as plain Melvyn Kohn. He became Kingsland when he was 17 because he wanted a "literary sounding" name. The stories about his grand connections have all proved to be false.