Police, art sleuth crack case of Brueghel stolen in Poland in 1974

Police, art sleuth crack case of Brueghel stolen in Poland in 1974

This undated handout photo published by the Gouda Museum on June 12, 2024, and obtained on March 2, 2025, shows the painting entitled "Woman Carrying Embers", also known as "Woman Moving A Bonfire", by Flemish-Dutch master Pieter Brueghel the Younger circa 1626, shown at an exhibition at the Museum Gouda, in Gouda

With the help of a well-known art detective and arts magazine journalists, Dutch police say they have cracked the case of the mysterious disappearance of a Brueghel painting from a Polish museum 50 years ago.

"Woman Carrying the Embers", also known as "Woman Moving A Bonfire", painted by the Flemish-Dutch master Pieter Brueghel the Younger around 1626, vanished from the National Museum in Gdansk during communist times around 1974.

Its whereabouts sparked numerous rumours -- including involvement by the Polish secret service at the time -- in a story worthy of a spy novel. 

The round painting, measuring just 17 centimetres (6.6 inches), was thought to have disappeared forever. 

But the stolen painting is currently under lock and key at a museum in the Dutch province of Limburg, Richard Bronswijk of the Dutch police's arts crime unit said.

"We are 100 percent sure that it's the same painting that disappeared from the National Museum in Gdansk back in 1974," Bronswijk told AFP.

- 'It's a match!' -

Arthur Brand, a well-known Dutch art detective, said suspicions were first raised when journalists from the leading Dutch arts magazine "Vind" spotted the painting at a Dutch exhibition last year.

Billed as "not being seen for the past 40 years", the painting was on loan to the Gouda Museum from a private collection.

"A magazine contributor, John Brozius, did some research and stumbled upon an article on a Polish website with an old black-and-white picture," Brand told AFP.

"The article was about a theft that took place in Gdansk in 1974 in which two artworks were stolen: 'The Crucifixion', a sketch by Anthony van Dyck, and a Brueghel the Younger painting," he said.

"Although the people from 'Vind' were not sure, it looked pretty similar to the Brueghel on display in Gouda," Brand said.

The painting depicts a peasant woman holding tongs with smouldering embers in one hand and a cauldron of water in the other, a reference to an old Dutch proverb: "Never believe a person who carries water in the one hand and fire in the other", or beware duplicity. 

The painting's value is unknown, but Brueghel the Younger's works generally sell for millions, according to the auction house Christie's.

Brand, nicknamed the "Indiana Jones of the Art World" for his high-profile recoveries of stolen pieces, was called in for help.

Together with Dutch police, Brand investigated the identity of the painting, which in the meantime had been moved to a museum in Venlo, the southern Netherlands.

Brand also scoured Interpol's database, which had put out a "database alert" for the Brueghel painting.

"I concluded that the painting listed by Interpol and the one on display was one and the same," he told AFP.

"We have checked and re-checked, including information on the back of the painting. It's a match!" added Bronswijk.

Dutch police have informed Polish authorities, who were expected to submit a request for legal assistance, Bronswijk said.

Neither the Dutch museums nor Polish authorities were immediately available for comment.

- 'Belongs in a museum' -

The theft was discovered on April 24, 1974, when a museum worker accidentally knocked the Brueghel off a wall.

"Instead of the original work by the famous Flemish painter, a reproduction cut out of a magazine fell out of the frame," stolen Polish arts expert Mariusz Pilus wrote in "Arts Sherlock" in 2019.

Days after the discovery, a Polish customs officer who had reported the illegal export of artworks through the Baltic port of Gdynia, is said to have been set alight and killed, shortly before he was to be interviewed by police.

Investigations into the customs officer's death and the paintings' disappearance were shut down shortly afterwards, Polish reports said.

Dutch police are now investigating how the painting eventually ended up in a private Dutch collection.

Brand said he hoped the Brueghel painting could soon be returned to Gdansk, "to be put on display, in a museum, where it belongs".

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Originally published as Police, art sleuth crack case of Brueghel stolen in Poland in 1974