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Robert Warren was poking through his art gallery’s closet when he stumbled on an old painting hidden behind a table.
At first, it didn’t look like much: a dingy, oil-on-wood panel of nude mythological figures. It had suffered water damage, and it was cracked in places.
“I didn’t think it was anything of value,” said Warren, executive director of the Hoyt Sherman Place art complex in Des Moines, Iowa. “I wasn’t sure why it would’ve been in that closet.”
This was right before Presidents Day weekend in 2016. The story might have ended there, but on the back of the painting Warren found what looked like an auction sticker.
And from that clue he began an extended sleuthing journey that would eventually uncover the truth: The painting is the work of 16th-century Dutch master Otto van Veen (1556-1629) and it’s likely worth more than $4 million.
Duane Tinkey/DSM Magazine
The painting was discovered in an art gallery closet.
What Warren thought was an auction sticker turned out to be a tag indicating the painting had once hung in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
As he soon learned, it was loaned to the Met by a man named Nason Collins, who took the painting with him in the early 1900s when he and his family resettled in Des Moines. Collins’ granddaughter later donated it and four other paintings to the Des Moines Women’s Club, which established an art gallery at Hoyt Sherman Place.
J. Levine auction
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Courtesy The Parker Gallery
"Two Hacks" (1789) by George Stubbs was sold at a Christie's
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Courtesy: C.Cordes/Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum
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Courtesy Tajan
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Courtesy Tajan
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Courtesy National Trust for Scotland
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Courtesy National Trust for Scotland
The work was originally purchased for $25 dollars at the end of the 19th century. It could now be worth $26 million.
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courtesy Art Recovery
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Picasso's "La Coiffeuse" ("The Hairdresser") was
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A Renoir painting finished in the 1800s, loaned to a museum, reported stolen in 1951 and then bought at a flea market in 2010 has to be returned to the museum, a judge ruled on January 10, 2014. The 5½-by-9-inch painting, titled "Landscape on the Banks of the Seine," was bought for $7 at a flea market by a Virginia woman. The estimated value is between $75,000 and $100,000.
Courtesy Interpol
Seven famous paintings were stolen from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 2012, including Claude Monet's "Charing Cross Bridge, London." The paintings, in oil and watercolor, include Pablo Picasso's "Harlequin Head," Henri Matisse's "Reading Girl in White and Yellow," Lucian Freud's "Woman with Eyes Closed" and Claude Monet's "Waterloo Bridge," seen here. Works by Gauguin and Meyer de Haan were also taken.
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Courtesy wga.hu
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Adam Worth, the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's diabolical character Moriarty, stole "Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire," painted by Thomas Gainsborough in 1876.
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Many works of art that were taken by the Nazis were never recovered. Others were returned after years of legal battles. "Christ Carrying the Cross," by Italian artist Girolamo de' Romani, was returned to his family in 2012.
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"The Scream" was one of two Edvard Munch paintings that were stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, in 2004.
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In 2007, Pablo Picasso's oil painting ''Portrait of Suzanne Bloch" was taken from the Sao Paulo Museum of Art. It was recovered two years later.
But who was the artist? The tag identified him as Renaissance painter Federico Barocci, but Warren consulted art conservators and scholars who eventually traced the painting back to van Veen. Titled “Apollo and Venus,” it’s believed to have been created between 1595 and 1600.
The painting depicts the mythological figures of Apollo and Venus, the goddess of love, along with a cherub who may be her son Cupid. Apollo is holding a lyre and Venus is naked, painting on a canvas. Nearby are a collection of jewelry, a basket of fruit and flowers, a sprig of roses and a bowl of oysters.
Despite its beauty, the painting was apparently never displayed. Warren said it’s probably because it was too suggestive for Iowa viewers in the early half of the 20th century.
“There were no other nudes in any other paintings in the collection,” Warren said. “It’s a very sensual painting.”
It took nearly a year to get the painting restored and framed, Warren said.
The value of the painting is unclear. But it could be worth $4 million to $11 million based on sales of other works by van Veen, Warren said.
He said there are no plans to sell, however.
Hoyt Sherman Place held a private unveiling of the artwork last month. Now the gallery is making plans to display it permanently.
“People want to come in and see it,” Warren said. “But we have to wait until security is updated.”