Stolen 1700s work returned to owner
Mobsters took painting by Britain’s Opie in ’69
An 18th century British painting stolen by New Jersey mobsters in 1969 has been returned more than a half-century later to the family that bought it for $7,500 during the Great Depression, the FBI’S Salt Lake City field office announced Friday.
The 40-inch-by-50-inch John Opie painting — titled “The Schoolmistress” — is the sister painting of a similar work housed in the Tate Britain art gallery in London.
Authorities believe the piece was stolen with the help of a former New Jersey lawmaker, then passed among organized crime members for years before it ended up in the southern Utah city of St. George. A Utah man had purchased a house in Florida in 1989 from Joseph Covello Sr. — a convicted mobster linked to the Gambino family — and the painting was included in the sale, the FBI said.
When the buyer died in 2020, a Utah accounting firm that was seeking to liquidate his property sought an appraisal for the painting and it was discovered to likely be the stolen piece, the FBI said.
The painting, which dates to about 1784, was taken into custody by the agency pending resolution of who owned it and returned on Jan. 11 to Dr. Francis Wood, 96, of Newark, the son of the painting’s original owner, Dr. Earl Wood, who bought it during the 1930s, the FBI said.
“This piece of art, what a history it’s had,” said FBI Special Agent Gary France, who worked on the case. “It traveled all through the U.K. when it was first painted, and owned by quite a few families in the U.K. And then it travels overseas to the United States and is sold during the Great Depression and then stolen by the mob and recovered by the FBI decades later. It’s quite amazing.”
Opie, who came from the Cornwall region, was one of the most important British historical and portrait painters in his time, said Lucinda Lax, curator of paintings at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. His paintings have sold at major auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s, including one bought in 2007 for almost $1 million.
Opie often portrayed British royals and other members of the elite. But he also depicted scenes from ordinary life, such as in “The Schoolmistress,” which shows an older teacher sitting at a table with a book and surrounded by young students.
“It’s such a compelling painting,” Lax said. “It’s a subject drawn from everyday life and he paints it in a very direct, straightforward way.”
According to the FBI, the painting was taken from Earl Wood’s house by three men working at the direction of former New Jersey state Sen. Anthony Imperiale, who died in 1999.
Imperiale was in the national spotlight in the 1960s as a spokesman for cracking down on crime. He was also divisive, organizing citizen patrols to keep Black protesters out of Italian neighborhoods during riots in Newark in the summer of 1967.