By Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo News Editor
MIDTOWN WEST — More than two decades after its theft from a Manhattan gallery, a $100,000 Paul Klee painting was returned to the United States by a Canadian gallery owner, it was announced on Wednesday.
In 1989, the staff at Manhattan’s Marlborough Art Gallery reported the Swiss artist's 1930 oil painting, “Portrait in the Garden,” stolen after an extensive search revealed that it was missing from the gallery’s storage area.
The painting was found 21 years later by Montreal gallery owner Robert Landau, who received it from a Florida man claiming to be an art dealer.
The man approached Landau about buying the painting at the Art Basel contemporary art show in Miami in December 2009, but because the alleged dealer was unable to prove the painting’s authenticity, Landau declined to purchase it. The supposed dealer then sent the gallery owner the painting with the understanding that if it stood up to scrutiny, Landau would buy it.
But the savvy gallery owner soon realized it was stolen and handed the painting over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security.
“It’s great that Mr. Landau and the agents were so diligent,” said Janis Gardner Cecil, Marlborough Art Gallery’s sales director, told DNAinfo of the find. She said that the painting had increased substantially in value over the past 20-plus years, but noted that the gallery no longer owns it.
The painting was given to the Art Loss Register, which was the registered owner after the insurance company paid the claim to Marlborough Art following the theft. Christie’s will put the painting up for auction in New York City.
Gardner Cecil did not know whether the gallery would bid on the painting.
“The recovery of this painting sends a strong message to thieves that people in the art community are on the look out for stolen art,” Special Agent James T. Hayes, Jr., of the ICE Office of Investigations in New York, said in a press release on Wednesday.
ICE did not wish to comment on any further investigation into the matter.
