Drunken Deliveryman Lost $1.3M Painting

"Portrait of a Girl" by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, worth $1.35 million, was reportedly lost by a drunken courier.

Great art has been made by people under the influence of alcohol. Great art deliveries have not.

Just ask New York City art courier James Haggerty, who is being sued for losing track of a $1.35 million painting after getting liquored up in a hotel bar.

Haggerty was tasked with showing a Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot masterpiece to a prospective buyer at The Mark hotel in Manhattan's Upper East Side on July 28.

According to the suit, surveillance footage shows Haggerty arrive at the posh hotel with the painting, titled "Portrait of a Girl," at 10:54 p.m. Six minutes later, Haggerty left the painting with hotel staff at the front desk and went into the hotel bar with the possible buyer, a British gallery owner who wanted to examine the work with a black light.

But the prospective buyer, Offer Waterman, thought something fishy was going on when Haggerty showed up at his hotel without an appointment.

"Something just didn't feel right, and I didn't want to be involved," Waterman said. "So I said no, and I said goodbye."

Footage shows the pair exiting the bar at 11:30 p.m. and Haggerty retrieving the painting from the front desk. But four minutes later, the tape reportedly shows Haggerty heading back to the front desk, stowing the artwork and returning to the bar, alone.

At 12:50 a.m., security cameras capture Haggerty as he leaves the bar, picks up the painting from the front desk and "stumbles out the front door, colliding with the doorman as he is exiting," according to the lawsuit.

When he next appears on surveillance tape entering his apartment in the Trump Building at 2:30 a.m., Haggerty doesn't appear to be holding the painting made by the acclaimed 19th-century Barbizon School artist.

The following day, Haggerty called one of the owners of the artwork and said "he did not have the painting and could not recall its whereabouts, citing that he had too much to drink the previous evening."

But painting co-owner Kristyn Trudgeon isn't taking his word for it. She's suing Haggerty for $1.35 million -- the work's estimated value.

"I think he's a complete fumbling idiot," she told the tabloids. "He's just a complete a--hole."

For now, it's unclear if the work is lost or stolen -- though according to the suit, Haggerty exhibited "deception" on a polygraph exam when asked if he was hiding information or was involved in an attempt to steal the work.

Art security experts said that art works aren't more vulnerable to thieves when they are put in the hands of couriers, so long as you've hired the right couriers.

Glenn Bertrand, general manager of Fine Art Security Transport, said that professional firms usually entrust two people to move art works, one to guard the art and the other to protect the vehicle -- which should be alarmed and tracked by satellites.

Good art handlers know how to safely move works of art, and according to Bertrand, they also know when they don't have to.

"Any kind of unnecessary travel for anything very delicate -- a lot of people would frown upon that," he said.

"If someone wanted to see it, maybe it would be better if they just came in to see it in person."