Long-missing Matisse recovered in Europe

A quarter century after an impressionist work by Henri Matisse was taken from a Swedish museum by a thief wielding a sledgehammer, the 1920 painting has been recovered.

The work, “Le Jardin,” an oil on canvas now worth approximately $1 million, was about to be sold when dealer Charles Roberts ran it through a global database of stolen art – standard practice before a sale, according to Agence France-Presse.

Roberts, who runs Charles Fine Art in southern England, said he was stunned to discover the Matisse had been filched in May 1987.

“It’s not something that happens every day,” Roberts said. “I’m glad I found out now rather than later.”

Roberts said the current Polish owner, whom he did not name, had bought the artwork in good faith 20 years ago, according to the Associated Press.

Christopher Marinello, a lawyer working with the London-based Art Loss Register, which tracks stolen, missing and looted art, said the painting, valued at about $1 million, would be returned to Stockholm’s Moderna Museet.

Stolen Matisse recovered after a decade

Ten years ago a 1925 work by French master Henri Matisse disappeared from a Venezuelan museum, having been swapped, it was later learned, with a fake.

The work, “Odalisque a la culotte rouge” (Odalisque in Red Pants), only surfaced recently when two individuals tried to sell the painting, valued at $3 million.

FBI undercover agents busted Pedro Antonio Marcuello Guzmanof Miami and Maria Martha Elisa Ornelas Lazo of Mexico City during a Miami Beach sting this past summer.

The pair sought to peddle the work for $740,000, negotiating with undercover agents posing as buyers, and then arranged for the painting to be flown from Mexico to Miami by Ornelas, according to Reuters.

The two pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport and sell stolen property late last month, the US Attorney’s Office in Miami said in a statement.

Both told the agents they knew the post-Impressionist work was stolen, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reported.