Ryan O’Neal defended taking a portrait of his longtime girlfriend Farrah Fawcett painted by Andy Warhol from her home following her 2009 death, claiming it belongs to him.

Ryan O'Neal Says Farrah Fawcett Portrait 'Is Mine'

"The painting is mine," O’Neal said before the jury. "I removed the painting a week or more after she died.”

The University of Texas at Austin is suing O’Neal for the portrait of the late Charlie’s Angels star, citing Fawcett’s will, which left her entire art collection to her alma mater. While the University has a sister print to the one O’Neal recouped, they are adamant that they have both.

Warhol’s portrait of Fawcett is primarily black and white, with scarlet lips and aqua-colored irises. The portrait hung on the wall over O’Neal’s bed at his beach house in Malibu from the time it was painted in 1980 until 1998 – when he was caught having an affair with a 25-year-old woman. A year after the incident, O’Neal handed the portrait over to Fawcett who had it hanging on a wall of her condo on Wilshire Boulevard. Now, it’s back in O’Neal’s Malibu digs.

Andy Warhol Created Farrah Fawcett Print In 1980

O’Neal, in addition to making known that he and Fawcett eventually reconciled, testified that Warhol approached him and offered to create portraits of both Fawcett and the Peyton Place actor in 1980. He also claimed that he was the one who gave Fawcett the idea to donate her art to the University of Texas, but that none of Warhol’s works were to go to the school. Following the University’s initial lawsuit in 2011, O’Neal filed a counter-suit for a Warhol-decorated tablecloth they’d received in the will.

O’Neal hopes to leave the portrait of Fawcett to their son Redmond O'Neal.

– Chelsea Regan

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