Stolen 1940 Dutch Painting Found After French Museum's 'Wanted' Posters

A 17th-century Dutch painting stolen from a French museum in 1940 has been found and is returning home, thanks to a "Wanted" poster campaign. Willem Cornelisz Duyster's Un Buveur (The Drinker) surfaced last month at an auction house in Switzerland, the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans told ARTnews.

Le Journal de l'Art reported the discovery earlier. The work is currently held in customs at the French border.

How was the painting found?

An unnamed Orléans resident spotted Un Buveur in a catalog for an October 17 sale at the Gloggner auction house in Lucerne. The painting carried an estimate of about $3,400 and was catalogued as a study of the original.

"He wanted to help us, and that was the goal of the campaign: that these searches are shared or collective," said Olivia Voisin, the museum's director.

The local had seen the museum's "Wanted" posters and spent his free time sifting through online auctions.

The poster campaign features the word "WANTED" in chunky American Old Western lettering across black-and-white images of the museum's lost works. The museum has shared them on social media and its website, backed by a digital catalog of the stolen paintings created two years ago.

What did the holder do?

The museum contacted the auction house, which cooperated immediately and "was very transparent throughout," Voisin said. She presented the possessor with an image of the original superimposed on a digital image of his painting. The two matched perfectly.

He had bought the painting from a London auction house in the 1990s.

"He immediately proposed to restitute the painting," Voisin said. "It was pretty natural for him to return it, because he felt that he had been able to enjoy it for 35 years, and it was time for it to go home."

The restitution came at no cost to the museum. Voisin noted that such cooperation marks a change in attitudes among holders of disputed works.

Why does this painting matter?

Un Buveur depicts a seated man in contemporary dress holding out an empty glass, his other arm raised as if caught midsentence. Experts consider it one of Duyster's finest works. It represents a stolen collection that once held several Dutch 17th-century paintings of revelry.

The painting shows damage from several layers of overpainting and cleaning attempts. In good condition, Voisin estimated its value at €25,000 to €30,000 ($28,000 to $33,600) — roughly nine times its Lucerne auction estimate.

How many works are still missing?

Nazi forces attacked Orléans in June 1940, and some 350 artworks were plundered from the Musée Paul Fourché, an annex of the Beaux-Arts museum. People on both sides of the conflict are believed to have ransacked the collection.

In total, 424 paintings remain missing, counting works lost or stolen at other periods. They include pieces by Édouard Manet, Hans Holbein the Younger, Anthony van Dyck, Lorenzo Costa, and one attributed to Raphael's Renaissance workshop.

Since the digital catalog and poster campaign began, four paintings, including Un Buveur, have come back. The campaign's collective-search model now offers a tested template for other museums chasing wartime losses.