NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

Hopper painting fetches $19M

NEW YORK

An Edward Hopper painting of New York City’s Roosevelt Island has sold for more than $19 million at auction.

“Blackwell’s Island,” a large-scale oil painting from 1928, sold at Christie’s on Thursday. Christie’s identified the seller as a private American collector. The buyer wasn’t identified.

The painting depicts the island from across the East River against a dark silhouette of buildings. The island was renamed for President Franklin Roosevelt in 1971.

The painting was recently included in the first major retrospective of Hopper’s work at the Grand Palais in Paris. It also has been exhibited in museums, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The current Hopper record is $26.9 million for “Hotel Window.”

Another jewel theft at film fest

PARIS

Thieves outsmarted 80 security guards in an exclusive French Riviera hotel and made off with a necklace that creators say is worth a staggering $2.6 million — in the second such jewelry heist during this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

The De Grisogono jewelry house said Thursday that the necklace was stolen after a party for festival attendees at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on Tuesday night. In a statement, it said the theft occurred “despite the large security measures set in place: over 80 security guards plus police.”

A police official said that the “high value” necklace was stolen overnight from the luxurious resort town of Cap d’Antibes. She gave no further details and spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak on the record about an ongoing investigation.

Newly discovered book by Buck

PHILADELPHIA

A newly discovered novel by the late Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck is to be released this fall.

New York-based Open Road Integrated Media says Buck wrote the novel, “The Eternal Wonder,” shortly before she died in 1973. The publisher says someone found the manuscript in storage in January. It will be published Oct. 22 in paperback and digital formats.

The publisher announced the decision Wednesday, describing the book as the coming-of-age story of a gifted young man whose search for meaning leads him to New York, England, Paris and Korea.

Buck’s novel “The Good Earth” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and helped earn her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. She raised seven adopted children and wrote many works at her farm outside Philadelphia.

Vindicator wire services