Found on a bus near Disneyland, stolen Degas worth £700k
A PICTURE by Edgar Degas stolen from a museum nine years ago has been found on a bus parked at a motorway service station near Paris.
Les Choristes, worth £700,000, was discovered in a suitcase in the luggage compartment of the vehicle during a random search by French customs police.
None of the passengers admitted to transporting the 1877 pastel drawing, which depicts a group of opera singers in a scene from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
It vanished without trace after being stolen from the Musee Cantini in Marseilles when it was on loan from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris in 2009.
The robbery baffled police because there were no signs of a break-in and CCTV footage revealed no clues.
The bus was searched last Friday in Marne-la-Vallee, where Disneyland Paris is located. Experts from the Musee d’Orsay later confirmed it was the stolen 13in by 11in picture.
The discovery of Les Choristes comes as a major exhibition about Degas’s relationship with the dancers at the Paris Opera concludes at the Musee d’Orsay this weekend. Nearly half a million art enthusiasts have visited the exhibition.
Culture minister Francoise Nyssen said she was delighted about the ‘rediscovery of a precious work belonging to the national collections, whose disappearance represented a heavy loss for the French impressionist heritage’.
A spokesman for the Musee d’Orsay said: ‘It is a wonderful happy ending to the story. It is the centenary of his death, and we are organising a huge show about Degas and the opera for 2019. It would have been a terrible loss for us to do it without this painting.’
Degas is best known for his depictions of ballet dancers, both in paintings and sculptures highlighting their movement. He is often considered one of the founders of the Impressionist movement, although he preferred to refer to himself as a ‘realist’.
In August 2016 scientists using X-rays discovered a hidden painting of a face beneath the surface of Degas’s Portrait of a Woman. The picture they revealed is believed to be a portrait of the model Emma Dobigny that the artist abandoned and painted over.
A statement from French customs police said: ‘On Friday February 16 customs officers from Marne- la-Vallee carried out checks on a bus at the Ferrieres-en-Brie motorway rest area. They discovered a work of art in a suitcase that carried the signature “Degas” which none of the passengers admitted to having put there. Officers seized the painting and asked experts at the Musee d’Orsay.’ The theft of Les Choristes was only discovered when staff at the Musee Cantini opened the premises in the morning on New Year’s Eve in 2009.
The museum remained on lockdown during the investigation.
Police originally said the picture was worth £26million, but the national museum service later revised the figure.