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Four Decades Later, Stolen Portrait Of Rubens and Van Dyck Returned To England

A double portrait of artist Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck has been returned 45 years after it was stolen.

The oil-on-wood painting is a double portrait of the two Flemish masters. It was created by another Flemish artist, Erasmus Quellinus II. It had been in the Devonshire Collections at the Chatsworth House, Derbyshire since 1838. In 1978, Peter Day – now a retired librarian – organized an exhibition in Sheffield where the painting was loaned as one of the exhibited works. In 1978, Day organized another exhibition of the work in 1979 at the Towner Art Gallery. During the exhibition, on May 26, the work was stolen by unknown people. At the time, it was described as a “smash and grab”. For decades, there were no whereabouts of the painting and it was considered lost.

However, in 2020, Bert Schepers – who is a Belgian art historian – saw and recognized the work at an auction in Toulon, France. The case was then taken up by the Art Loss Register, an independent organization that catalogs stolen/lost artworks. The organization spent the next 3 years to finally hammer an agreement for the return of the work.

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Chatsworth House, the original home of the painting, was elated to have it returned: “Despite that long period of time since the loss, we are delighted to have been able to secure its return to Chatsworth where it belongs, and this should give hope to others who are still seeking the return of pictures stolen decades ago.” The painting already underwent a restoration process and will now have its first exhibition in November at the National Galleries of Scotland.