The Hungarian artist who writes personal inscriptions in English

In our white male privilege, we often forget or ignore many little details. For example, that women can own art, and also that everybody knows English but it's not everybody's first language. Well, not everybody, but a significant majority of people in the world know at least a little English, which is more than we can say for a language like Nahuatl or Slovak.

There is a good illustration of this in an early episode of White Collar, Lisa's favorite show. The Season 1 episode "The Portrait" is about a painting, Young Girl with Locket, by Haustenburg, stolen at least twice before the episode begins. The first theft occurred at some point prior to 1967, when Walter (Peter McRobbie) from the Channing Museum ignores Haustenberg's will and an inscription on the back of the painting ("to my dearest Julianna, keep this forever"), and puts it into the Channing's collection instead of giving it to Haustenberg's illegitimate daughter Julianna. In 1967, Julianna somehow took the painting out of the Channing.

Fast forward to 2009 (I'm assuming episodes of this show are contemporaneous with their original airdates). Julianna Laszlo (Kim Shaw), the great-granddaughter of Haustenburg, owned the painting until it was stolen out of her house. FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) and felon-turned-consultant Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) are on the case. As arrogant forgers go, Neal Caffrey is one of the most likable. After various twists and turns, Neal winds up in possession of the painting and knowledge of to whom the painting rightfully belongs, and he keeps both of these to himself until notorious loan shark Gerard Dorsett (Michael Crane) threatens the life of Taryn Vandersant (Deanna Russo), who had earlier helped Peter and Neal.

Neal confesses to Peter that he has the painting, and agrees to give it up so that Gerard can be busted and Taryn can be safe. But Neal knows that Peter, as an agent of an organization that enforces white male privilege, is duty-bound to return the painting to the Channing. However, Neal has a trick up his sleeve. He deliberately makes a forgery of the painting good enough to fool the casual observer but not a museum expert like Walter.

When Peter hands Walter the painting, he believes he's handing over the genuine original, but gets worried as Walter just keeps looking and looking at the painting. Walter turns it over, and instead of seeing Haustenburg's inscription, sees a special message from Neal:

My dear Walter, I know what you saw here last time. NC

Walter is forced to accept the painting as authentic.

It's a brilliant episode of a very good show. However, I have some nits (which is of course the point of this blog). First of all, why was Haustenburg's inscription in English? Shouldn't it be in Hungarian? Or did Haustenburg foresee that the inscription needed to be intelligible to a dishonest museum curator and a forger with a heart of gold in New York? Unless maybe the title girl with the locket was born in England or in America (Julianna Laszlo does say that Haustenburg had a family in Hungary, which doesn't rule out a love child anywhere in the world). Also, how exactly is it that the painting came to be in the possession of the Channing? How could Neal be so sure Walter was the one who read the original inscription and chose to ignore it?

My fellow nitpickers at WhiteCollarLexicon.com have a few more nits, including: why does Dorsett try to sell the painting to an art gallery in the same city in which it was stolen?