Ukrainian authorities and French Ambassador to Ukraine Isabelle Dumont have announced that a famous French painting stolen in France in May 2018 has been found in Ukraine.
The 1915 oil painting “Le port de La Rochelle” by French impressionist Paul Signac – worth €1.5 million – was recently discovered in Kyiv at the home of a man suspected of murdering a jeweler, according to police chief Sergiy Knyazev.
The police received a tip that individuals were seeking buyers for several paintings coming from Europe, according to Sergiy Tykhonov, another police official.
At a press conference on April 23, the Ukrainian police showed a video where the alleged thief admitted to the crime and even said that the oil painting was “stolen only because it was very simple.”
The suspect even advised France to beef up security in museums across the country.
A French art expert present at the event to authenticate the painting thanked the Ukrainian authorities for this “excellent news.” The painting was gifted to the Museum of Nancy by a collector in the 1960s and its shocking disappearance was a hard blow to the local museum.
Paul Signac was a neo-impressionist painter who pioneered in the pointillist technique, making his work particularly valuable.
“Signac’s works are very recognizable by their points… his paintings would be painted using dots of color… this painting here belongs to the second part of his career, with dots that were slightly larger,” the French expert said.
At the press conference, Dumont also thanked the Ukrainian authorities and shared her emotions after the fire that struck Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15.
“We, French people, are still mourning the catastrophe of Notre Dame… and even if the finding of this painting is not of the same nature, it is a small bandage on a still fresh wound,” she said.
The Ukrainian government must now quickly ensure the painting’s safe return to its home at the Museum of Fine Arts in Nancy in northeast France.
Ukrainian officials said they are working with Austrian authorities to investigate whether the same gang was involved in the theft in Vienna of a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
