Police in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania have made meager progress in the search for a portrait bust of Benjamin Franklin that was stolen from a home in nearby Bryn Mawr. Also missing is an autographed picture of the German-American composer Victor Herbert, mounted in a shadowbox along with one of his batons and sheet music, valued at $80,000. Though a warrant has been issued for Andrea Lawton, a 44-year-old house-cleaner who was dismissed from her job at a housekeeping service contracted by the sculpture's owners, repeated visits to Lawton's current address have proven ineffectual. “She's not there,” Lt. Frank Higgins told the York Daily Record, explaining that Lawton was first named a suspect after other employees of the cleaning service saw her leaving the Bryn Mawr home on August 24 and getting into an SUV driven by an unidentified accomplice.

Crafted by late-Baroque sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon in the late 1770s, the artwork is one of four created while Franklin was living in Paris, after the Continental Congress appointed him Minister to France. Already a well-known portraitist, Houdon unveiled his first version of the sculpture — now held by the Musée du Louvre — at the French Royal Academy exhibition in 1779, and gained further recognition for later versions in marble. A plaster copy purchased by Thomas Jefferson is still on display at his Monticello estate, and a marble edition, held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is valued at $3 million.

Fashioned from plaster, the Bryn Mawr version is said to equal the other works in monetary value, though given the the gouty Pennsylvanian's high standing among Franco-American diplomats, its recovery has been described in sentimental terms as well. Speaking to the Daily Record, Higgins said he was “greatly” concerned about the case, adding that the Lower Merion police were working with Philadelphia authorities in their search for Lawton and her accomplice.