The work was stolen from a museum in Marseille in 2009
French customs have found a 19th-century painting by Edgar Degas entitled "Les Choristes", stolen in late 2009 in Marseille, hidden in the trunk of a bus in the Paris area, the Ministries of Culture and Finance announced today. their announcement.
Owned by the Orsay Museum, the painting - also called "Les Figurants" - was stolen from the Cantini Museum in Marseille, where it was lent for an exhibition, with no trace of burglary.
While inspecting a parked bus in an area east of Paris, customs discovered on February 16 in a suitcase "a work bearing the signature 'Degas', of which none of the passengers claimed ownership," the joint statement said. of the two ministries.
They seized the painting allegedly attributed to Degas, an Impressionist French painter, born in 1834, who died in 1917, and sought expertise from the Orsay Museum. "The first elements of the expertise allow us to say that this is indeed the project we were looking for," the two ministries said in a statement.
Culture Minister François Nissen expressed her delight at "this happy discovery of a valuable work belonging to national collections, the disappearance of which was a heavy loss for the French Impressionist heritage".
Her counterpart, Gerard Darmanen, to whom the customs belong, welcomed the "continuous vigilance of customs in the fight against the smuggling of cultural goods and its commitment to the protection of cultural heritage".
When it was stolen, in 2009, the National Association of Museums had stated that the value of this pastel painting, measuring 32 by 27 million, in 1877, was 800.000 euros. For his part, the staff of the museum in Marseille had estimated its value at "30 million euros", but the prosecutor's office had spoken of "confusion".
Answering a related question, the Orsay Museum explained on Tuesday that it was not going to comment on these numbers: "They are the insurance prices and they are not announceable".
(archive photo from an exhibition of Degas paintings)