Marc Chagall painting recovered by FBI 30 years after it was stolen

The painting still has a label with the original owner's names

(FBI )

A Marc Chagall painting that had been stolen 30 years ago has been found by the FBI.

The painting, 1911’s “Othello and Desdemona,” was stolen from Ernest and Rose Heller’s New York apartment by a temporary employee of the building in 1998. The painting was recovered after two attempted sales, one at a Washington DC art gallery.

The owner had refused to buy it without the proper ownership paperwork, which is when the FBI stepped in. The painting, which depicts Shakespeare’s Othello holding a sword while looking over his bride Desdemona, still had the label “Mr. + Mrs. E.S. Heller, New York” at the time of the last attempted sale in 2017. The first time a sale was attempted was 2011.

The seller was a Maryland resident who had stored it in his attic for several years after being given the painting by the suspected thief in the late 1980s or 1990s, according to court documents. The man, who was unnamed in documents, had planned to sell it as soon as he was given the painting but a dispute with the buyer prompted him to keep it all those years.

"Well-documented and known art is very hard to move once it has been stolen," FBI Supervisory Special Agent Tim Carpenter told the BBC, adding that "gallery owners are our first line of defence in identifying pieces of art that do not have the appropriate documentation and should be brought to the attention of law enforcement”.

Unfortunately Mr Heller, a retired jeweler, died in 1998 and Mrs Heller passed in 2003 and could not witness the recovery of the work. Prosecutors have asked that the court approve returning the painting to the Hellers’ estate, who would use the funds of an auction sale to reimburse the estimated $100,000 insurance payment at the time of the theft as well as contributions to charities.

Fourteen other works of art had been stolen from the Hellers’ home in the same heist, according to the FBI. None of the other works from the heist have been recovered, but the Hellers’ estate lawyer, Alan Scott, said “of all the works that could have been recovered, this is the one that would have pleased them the most”.

Mr Chagall was an artist in Mr Heller’s family social circle in 1911 in Paris, when the work was completed. His father bought the piece from the artist himself.

The FBI were aided by a feud between the thief and the middleman in Maryland, now both in their 70s. One had promised the other a fee for having found a buyer for the painting through “connections with Bulgarian organised crime,” according to court documents.