"The Great Portrait Mystery and Other Stories" is a crime mystery novel by the famed author of the Thorndyke mystery novels, R. Austin Freeman. Joseph Fittleworth is a painter, with a leaning to the methods of the past rather than to those of the future, a fact that often diminished the chances of his success. Hence it had happened that Fittleworth had accepted with avidity a not very lucrative supernumerary post at the National Gallery where he could, at least, have his being amidst the objects of his worship, which included an exceedingly comely young lady, who came regularly to the gallery to copy pictures, principally of the Flemish school. But this mundane experience will all change one fateful morning when he helps a man carry a painting out of the museum, a mistake he would live to regret…
