ART

Rather than pay $60,000--a price he found excessive--a San Francisco man stole a valuable 19th-Century American painting from the North Point Gallery on Tuesday. San Francisco police said that the thief haggled over the price with clerk Jessie Dunn Gilbert, then broke off the negotiation, told her he had a gun and would use it unless she got into a storage closet and stayed there. When Gilbert emerged, the painting and the man were gone. The painting, by Robert Spear Dunning, was titled “Still Life With Peaches, Grapes and Pears.”