Kansas City, Mo. — It may not take Mideast peace, after all, to return a stolen Marc Chagall painting to its rightful owner.
The FBI on Tuesday said it had recovered a work believed to be Chagall's 8-by-10-inch oil painting, "Study for 'Over Vitebsk,"' valued at $1 million when it was reported stolen last June from The Jewish Museum during a Chagall exhibit.
After the work was found missing June 8, a group called the International Committee for Art and Peace said the painting would not be returned until Israelis and Palestinians made peace.
A preliminary examination Tuesday of the work found the painting is probably the work of Chagall, the French-Russian painter.
The 1914 water-on-paperboard work shows an old man carrying a walking stick and beggar's sack, floating in the sky above a village. It was a study a practice work for a larger, similar piece called "Over Vitebsk" done the same year.
"We are hopeful, but we're not yet certain that this is indeed the stolen painting," said Anne Scher, a spokeswoman at The Jewish Museum.
The museum had offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the painting.
A package containing the painting, which had been at the New York museum on loan from a private collection in Russia, was discovered recently at a postal facility in St. Paul, Minn. It was classified as undeliverable mail and shipped to a postal facility Topeka, Kan., where such mail is opened in an attempt to find its owner, or auctioned.
In Topeka, where the package was opened about 10 days ago, workers noticed the painting's backside bore stickers from several museums and called the FBI. They also cut away a paper backing, but didn't damage the artwork, FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza said.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.