The Art Loss Registers Recovers 17 TH Century Flemish Painting on Behalf of Insurer
The Art Loss Register (ALR), the world’s leading resource for tracking lost and stolen artwork, announces the recovery of Jan van Kessel the Elder and Abraham Willemsens’ remarkable painting Interior of a Collector’s Cabinet: An Allegory of Sight.
The painting had been stolen in September 2020 from a private residence in Ontario, Canada.
After immediately reporting the theft the police, the painting was also registered with the
ALR by the victim. AXA XL paid on the ensuing insurance claim and thus secured the right to
claim the stolen painting if it ever reappeared.
In October 2023, the painting was identified when Sotheby’s checked the item against the
ALR database as part of their standard due diligence process. The painting had been offered
to Sotheby’s with detailed cataloguing and provenance, alongside a claim that the consignor
had bought it from a 2015 sale in Switzerland, the same sale in fact at which the theft victim
themselves had purchased the work. The ALR team immediately matched it to the 2020
registration of the stolen painting, and Sotheby’s was informed of the item’s stolen status.
The potential consignor then went silent for over a year. Eventually the ALR, representing
the insurer, was able to secure a response from him and the recovery of the painting. The
painting was shipped to Sotheby’s New York in August 2025 and sold for just under
US$90,000, over twice its high estimate at the beginning of this year.
James Ratcliffe, Director of Recoveries at The Art Loss Register, commented: “This
recovery demonstrates not only the benefit of registering stolen works with our database,
but also the great value of due diligence checks carried out by the art market. We are grateful to Sotheby’s for their diligence and assistance in this case, which enabled the
recovery of this picture and a very successful subsequent sale for the benefit of the insurer.”