Stolen Paintings Recently Recovered
Stolen Paintings Recently Recovered
Not exactly the one I want to see returned, but it's a good sign
Despite the 1970 art crime stats, which indicate stolen art missing after just five years has just a single-digit chance of recovery, there seems to be a recent upswing in the life cycle of missing art as old thieves and collectors die and leave the stolen goods behind. A new data point could be emerging for recovered art. We are in a period where old criminals and collectors that possessed stolen art taken in the 1960s and 1970 are passing away, and hopefully passing art back into circulation, even if it is with a little luck.
Entering 2024, two new stories of recovered art have already emerged, providing a glimmer of hope that a missing Picasso stolen in St. Louis fifty years ago has a chance to return. In case you haven’t read the book Chasing Picasso, it is a true story about an unsolved Picasso theft that occurred at the Saint Louis Art Museum just three days after Picasso died (April 8, 1973). Each of the most recent cases of recovery reflects the two most likely motives for stealing the painting, and their route to recovery could predict the path of return for the missing Rose Period Picasso.
Case #1 Stolen 2010
Around mid-January, paintings by Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso were recovered in Belgium fourteen years after they went missing from a private art collector in Tel Aviv. Picasso’s Tête and Chagall’s L’homme en prière were stolen in 2010, with a combined value of $900,000. In the same heist, burglars stole jewelry worth $680,000 (still missing at the time the art was found). Belgian police received a tipoff that an art dealer in the Walloon capital of Namur was offering the two paintings for sale.
The suspect behind the theft was a 68-year-old Israeli luxury watch dealer. When federal police raided the suspect’s home they found a significant amount of money, but not the paintings. He confessed to possessing the paintings but refused to say where they were stored. Police expanded the search to a building that previously housed an art dealership known for its connection to previous stolen art cases. Police recovered two wooden boxes with lids containing the stolen art, undamaged and still in their original frames.
Case #2 Stolen 1969
A week after the Picasso/Chagall news, another piece of stolen art resurfaced in Washington County, Utah and also returned to its rightful owner. In this case, the painting had been missing for 54 years, just a few years longer than St. Louis’s missing Picasso. The painting by John Opie, titled The Schoolmistress, was completed in 1784. In July 1969, the original 18th-century painting was reportedly stolen by mobsters out of a home in New Jersey under the direction of an allegedly corrupt U.S. Senator.
Dr. Earl Leroy Wood of New Jersey reportedly purchased the painting for $7,500 during the Great Depression. Initially, three men attempted to steal his coin collection in 1969 but were unsuccessful when the home alarm scared them away. During the investigation, the home’s caretaker mentioned to the police and then State Senator Anthony Imperiale, that The Schoolmistress painting was “priceless.” Three weeks later, the three men returned, but this time they successfully escaped with the painting. In 1975, the three gangsters confessed to the robbery but said it was done under the direction of the senator. The FBI believed the painting remained in the hands of the mob over the years.
According to News Nation, in 1989, an unidentified man purchased a home in Hallandale, Florida. The home had belonged to Joseph Covello, Sr., a convicted mobster. The painting was included in the sale of the home, though the unidentified client did not know its extensive history or value. This man eventually sold the home and moved with the painting to St. George, Utah. The painting remained there until he died in 2020. Shortly before his death, he hired a Utah-based accounting firm to liquidate his residences and property. In December 2021, the firm acting as a trustee for the client appraised the painting, only to discover its true history. In January 2024, the FBI returned the painting to its rightful owner – Wood’s son, Dr. Francis Wood who is now 96 years old.
Below. Study for A Kneeling Woman Combing Her Hair (1906), Pablo Picasso, was taken from the art museum in St. Louis, April 11, 1973. The Rose Period oil painting went by several names and wasn’t documented in any Picasso art catalogs until the late 1960s. The museum purchased the painting in 1934.
The Potential Paths to Recovering the Picasso
Despite the 2010 case being a more recent art theft by comparison to the Picasso, it is a reminder that art can return to the open market because eventually, someone wants to cash in on the value. The Chagall and Picasso pieces sat in “cold storage” for fourteen years before being brought to a dealer to sell. Like the Picasso stolen from the art museum, the pieces seemed to be obscure enough to potentially avoid detection after so many years, but then again, 2010 is a far cry from art stolen in 1973.
The lesser-known works of renowned artists were nearly impossible to recover in the early days because there were no stolen art databases to search. Art ownership history was not well-documented, so transaction gaps were not necessarily an indication of a suspicious sale. Even searching for stories of old art thefts meant manually paging through newspaper archives at the library. An unlikely task for any art reseller to undertake for such an insignificant piece prior to the 1990s.
Many people assume stolen art must leave the country to be sold discretely. But this was not true in the 1960s or 1970s. Picasso art was in high demand in the US market and this piece was not well-known or well-documented. It could have easily been moved to another region and offered to a good-faith buyer without any thought. Given the circumstances of the period, the chances were greater that the stolen Picasso from the art museum stayed in the US market initially.
Two months after the Picasso was taken from the art museum, a Rockwell painting was taken from a nearby art gallery in St. Louis and it eventually landed in the hands of a couple in New Orleans, LA, who would put it up for auction in 1988. It is possible Study for A Kneeling Woman Combing Her Hair was also sold to a private collector, possibly in good faith, and not too far away from St. Louis. It may have even exchanged hands multiple times over the years. Since this painting is not listed in a public, stolen-art database, the current caretaker could put it up for auction not anticipating a problem with the sale. It’s one of the reasons the painting could still be recovered on the open market after a half-century has passed.
I am convinced the Picasso painting moved to another city, but it could have moved through the black market like the Opie. St. Louis area thieves arrested in other art theft cases from the 1970s era had ties to local organized crime. It’s possible the Picasso was stolen and used as currency in exchange for goods or services on the black market. If the painting landed in the hands of a criminal in another organized crime city, it may show up one day among the possessions of a dead mobster. Or like The Schoolmistress, ignorantly transferred in an estate sale to someone else.
In the early 1970s, there were specific states and cities the US government reported as being mafia cities. Organized crime thefts usually involved high-value, low-volume targets, like art and jewelry. In the early Fall of 1972, six months before the Picasso theft, a $250 thousand jewelry heist occurred at a store not too far from the museum. The stolen jewels landed in the hands of some shady characters, including a “top mafia boss” in Shreveport, Louisiana, as a judge intimately familiar with the case described the details while under oath in a 1978 US Government hearing.
The police arrested an accomplice two months after the jewelry robbery—a local art restorer/dealer. The dealer became an FBI informant in exchange for not being prosecuted. While another suspect was on trial for the jewelry robbery, the art dealer reopened his local shop in August 1973 and began his duties as an FBI informant. In early 1974, the new informant reports to an FBI agent that he was offered a stolen Rockwell to purchase shortly after re-opening his store. In the FBI report, the agent explained the suspected art thief was also related to an ex-convict, a man who was publicly identified as a mafia insider in 1979.
Even though there could be a valid argument for the missing Picasso to have been sent to Chicago or Detroit (both cities had strong ties to St. Louis crime operations) there is a justifiable reason for the stolen Picasso to have gone to Louisiana. The painting was stolen not too long after the jewelry theft, and just before the Rockwell theft. I don’t believe it was a coincidence that two unrelated thefts within a nine-month period had high-value goods sent to Louisiana. In fact, Louisiana was a very profitable criminal market under the leadership of mafia don, Carlos Marcello. Some biographers credit him as leading the most profitable organized crime operation at the height of mafia power.
Just as the Opie went from New Jersey to Florida, via organized crime, so may have the Picasso gone from Missouri to Louisiana. It could have also been quietly acquired and moved to another location waiting to be rediscovered. But as with the Opie, we might have to wait for a little luck and its current caretaker to age out of existence before anyone sees the Picasso again.
To learn more about the stolen Picasso, buy the book.
If you know something about the missing Picasso, Click here to submit your story.