A jury in Albany, N.Y., has found Santa Fe gallery owner Mark Zaplin not guilty of scamming an order of nuns in his 2009 purchase of a 19th-century French painting.

After less than a day of deliberations, the jurors rejected the sisters' claims of fraud and other charges against Zaplin and his co-defendant, Mark LaSalle, a New York art appraiser. They approved unspecified punitive damages for both defendants. The jury will reconvene Jan. 24 to determine the amount.

The jury also awarded Zaplin a $75,000 judgment in a related third-party defamation action against a New York art dealer who filed an affidavit in the case accusing Zaplin of being a "straw buyer." Paul Dumont claimed the appraiser and Zaplin were involved in a plot to dupe the sisters and turn a large profit.

The Daughters of Mary Mother of Our Savior and St. Joseph's Chapel sued Zaplin and LaSalle in 2009, claiming they bilked the sisters out of $1.7 million in the sale of Notre Dame des Anges, an 1889 work by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Zaplin had purchased the painting from them for $450,000, and later sold it to a Texas buyer for more than $2 million.

The complaint filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Albany, said that LaSalle and Zaplin "intentionally, deliberately, wantonly maliciously [and] with evil motive ... perpetrated fraud" against the congregation.

Zaplin, who has been a gallery owner in Santa Fe for more than 20 years, called the suit "frivolous," saying that he had never met the nuns and "for them to sue me was absurd." Fortunately, he added, "this jury saw right through the whole thing."

Tom Chase, Zaplin's lawyer, said of the jurors, "They got it in a big way." Chase noted that for three years his client has "been living under this cloud of having allegedly defrauded a bunch of innocent nuns," and the verdict is "an incredible vindication."

The sellers were not so innocent as they pretended to be, Chase added, "and once we presented all the evidence, [the jury] saw that it was a clean transaction."

The painting of Mary and the infant Jesus was donated to the Daughters of Mary Convent on Long Island and later turned over to the "motherhouse" in Round Top, a secluded area outside Albany. Years later, a novitiate, who spotted the painting hanging in a hallway, said it might be valuable. And in 2004 the nuns, who are not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, asked LaSalle to appraise it.

LaSalle told them the painting was worth up to $250,000, and more if it were restored. The nuns then took it to the Williamstown Regional Conservation Laboratory in Williamstown, Mass., where the head conservator was familiar with the work of Bouguereau.

Meanwhile, Dumont, a "picker" who sometimes spots paintings for dealers, called Zaplin and told him that LaSalle had access to a great painting. Zaplin saw it and bid $350,000. The nuns made a counteroffer, which he accepted. Zaplin sent them a cashier's check for $450,000 (which they didn't cash for three months).

The nuns later claimed that LaSalle knew the painting was worth much more.

Zaplin then spent $5,000 to finish lining the painting and bought a $40,000 French frame from the 1880s that made the 60-inch by 90-inch artwork look like it had come from the Louvre, he said. He also arranged for the painting to be put on display at the Dallas Museum of Art. Then, Zaplin said, "I got a Dallas dealer to get a Dallas customer enamored of the fact that [the painting] was going into this museum. That put it over the top. That was the work I did."

At the time the suit was filed, Zaplin said he reaped more than $1 million from the sale. The Dallas dealer and Dumont also shared in the proceeds.

Zaplin has consistently and strongly defended his actions.

"What did I do here?" he asked. "Somebody offered me a painting. I made an offer. I sent them a cashier's check — which they held for three months. I did not get an old lady in a hospital bed to sign this away."

"I made a lot of money on the deal," he admitted, "but I did a lot of work."

Although the case was in litigation for nearly three years, Zaplin said defending his name was a good use of his resources. "That's all you have in this business," he said.

But the transaction might be more difficult now, he conceded, because "it's a different market today."

Contact Anne Constable at 986-3022 or aconstable@sfnewmexican.com.