FBI finds missing painting

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 stolen last June from The Jewish Museum during a Chagall exhibit.

After the work was stolen 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 by 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. She said the museum was still making arrangements to have the painting authenticated in New York.

The museum had offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the painting.

Undeliverable mail

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 in 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 looked on the FBI's Web site, where they found a listing for the stolen Chagall, prompting them to call authorities. They also cut away a paper backing, but didn't damage the artwork, FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza said.

Lanza said it's possible the thief mailed the painting to an undeliverable address to get rid of it without being caught.

Two FBI agents carried the work, wrapped in a white sheet inside an open cardboard box, into the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art on Tuesday.

Conservation experts Scott Heffley and Elisabeth Batchelor donned white gloves and placed the small painting on a workbench, leaning on their elbows inches away from its glass cover as they talked about what they saw. They also put the piece under a microscope, and said paint loss on the work matched a condition report faxed to the Nelson by the Jewish Museum.

Jan Schall, the Nelson's curator for modern and contemporary art, pronounced that the piece looks like a Chagall, though she didn't have enough information to know for sure.

The painting was discovered missing the morning after a party at The Jewish Museum. Police found no sign of forced entry.

Art thefts with demands

It is believed to be only the third case in which art was stolen and political demands made.

Anna Kisluk, director of art services for the Art Loss Register, which maintains a database of more than 100,000 pieces of stolen art, said in 1974 a number of famous paintings including works by Johannes Vermeer and Francisco de Goya were stolen from a private collection in Britain. The Irish Republican Army demanded a large sum of money and the release of political prisoners in exchange for the works, she said. The paintings were later found and most of those involved were apprehended.

In the other case, Edvard Munch's "The Scream" was stolen from Norway's National Gallery in Oslo on the opening day of the 1994 Winter Olympics. Five days later, a Norwegian anti-abortion activist hinted that the painting might be returned if the national television station agreed to broadcast an anti-abortion film. Later that year, the painting was recovered -- and it turned out the abortion opponent was not involved in the theft.

The painting found in Kansas City is now headed for an undisclosed spot in New York for further authentication.

"For security reasons, I'm not going to tell you how," Lanza said. "But it's not going by the mail."