A painting by famous French post-Impressionist Edouard Léon Cortès has finally been found in a local UK art sale, after being stolen in the 1960s from the Herbert Arnot Gallery in New York. The piece, named "Flower Market Madeleine", was one of around 3,000 artworks that were looted from the New York gallery over a period of 12 years, from the '50s and '60s.
The recovery of the painting was announced last Tuesday, Nov. 21, by Art Recovery International, a private company dealing with dispute resolutions and art recovery services within the art market and cultural heritage sectors.
How "Flower Market Madeleine" was Stolen from the Arnot Gallery
Founded in Austria in the year 1863, Arnot Gallery later moved to New York City amidst the Second World War. Then in 1966, Louis Edelman was hired as a gallery manager and salesman for the New York Gallery, one of the many art galleries owned by the Arnot family. Here, the soon-to-be-stolen painting was being displayed among other paintings by Cortès.
Edelman soon left to allegedly open up his own gallery but it was later discovered that, during his employment in the Arnot Gallery, he was illegally selling over 3,000 paintings with a collective price tag of $1 Million dollars behind the back of his employers.
However, in 1969, the art thief was finally arrested by the FBI in Chicago and was befittingly sentenced to two years in prison with a $10,000 fine.
All 3,000 of the paintings floated along in the international art market and a couple of the pieces have even turned up in local auctions and galleries all over the world, one of which is the "Flower Market Madeline."
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Recovery of the Edouard Léon Cortès Painting
The Cortés painting was specifically sighted at a sale held by Carnes Fine Art, an art dealer in Mawdesley, England, which actually bought it from a Capes Dunn auction in Nov. of 2022.
According to Christopher A. Marinello, lawyer and founder of Art Recovery International, he spent months communicating with the parties involved with the sale in order to convince them to return Cortés' artwork back to the Arnot Gallery.
Thankfully, both Bradley Carnes and Capes Dunn, representatives of the parties, agreed to the "unconditional" return of the stolen painting which Marinello is grateful for. Marinello also advised others who would unwittingly buy a "stolen" Edouard-Leon Cortés piece, to rightfully return it to the New York gallery.
"We have been recovering one or two pictures per year from this 60-year-old theft and we're never going to give up until every last one is returned," he said.
