Cubist painting missing from Boston-area college

BOSTON (Reuters) - An elite women's liberal arts college outside Boston has lost a painting by early 20th century French Cubist Fernand Leger, whose work has sold for tens of millions of dollars.

The painting, "Woman and Child," disappeared after Wellesley College lent it to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for a 2006-2007 exhibition while the school's Davis Museum and Cultural Center was being renovated, the college's president said on Wednesday.

The 1921 painting was returned to Wellesley -- known for influential alumnae including New York Sen. Hillary Clinton -- after the exhibition closed, but remained tucked in a crate while renovations continued at the Davis museum.

The 25-by-21-inch (63.5-by-53.3-cm) painting depicts a blocky, angular female figure with her arms around a child.

Wellesley officials realized the painting was missing in November, when they went to look for it as part of a project to catalogue the museum's collection.

"The loss of this valuable and irreplaceable painting has saddened the entire community, and we still hope it will be found," college President said Kim Bottomly in a statement.

She said Wellesley, located about 12 miles west of Boston, has accounted for the other 31 works loaned to the Oklahoma Museum.

Leger's work commands multi-million dollar prices. An earlier Leger painting, "Etude pour La Femme en Bleu," sold for $39.2 million at auction in New York in May.

(Reporting by Scott Malone, editing by Jason Szep and Todd Eastham)