ART

A long-lost Victorian masterpiece found in an attic went on exhibit Tuesday at the British Museum in London. “The Halt in the Desert,” a watercolor painted by Richard Dadd in 1845, was listed by art experts as missing since it was exhibited in Manchester 130 years ago. Last May, a British Broadcasting Corp. program that seeks valuable antiques throughout Britain discovered the painting when it was brought to them by Bob and Pauline Walker of western England, who said they had the painting since 1930 and had kept it rolled up in a cardboard tube until a few years ago. The British Museum bought the painting, which is rated among the most impressive watercolors of the period, for $160,000. Art expert Peter Nahum, who inspected the painting on the television show, said, it was in “astonishingly good condition because it had obviously spent most of its life rolled up.”