Family reunited with John Opie painting stolen by New Jersey mob 54 years ago
A priceless 18th-century painting has been reunited with the original owner’s son more than a half century after New Jersey mobsters stole it.
Dr Francis Wood inherited the painter John Opie’s The Schoolmistress but had to wait 54 years to receive it after it was stolen.
A Utah judge ruled recently that the painting belonged to Wood after the art work was discovered in the state by an accounting firm during the liquidation of an estate, NBC News reported.
FBI agents in Salt Lake City and the Metropolitan police in London each had a hand getting the painting back to
Wood after a two-year investigation.
“It has one or two minor blemishes, but for a painting that’s 240 years old and has been on a roundabout journey, it’s in pretty good shape,” Tom Wood, Francis’s son, said to the Associated Press. “Whoever has had their hands on it, I’m thankful they took care of the painting.”
Wood’s father, Dr Earl Wood, bought the original painting for $7,500 while on a trip to Europe during the Great Depression.
The 1784 oil painting depicts an older woman and young boy reading amid other schoolchildren. A similar work by Opie hangs in the Tate Britain in London, the AP reported.
After buying it, Earl Wood hung The Schoolmistress in the family’s dining room.
But in 1969, the painting was stolen from the Woods’ home. Police believe three men who were working for the former New Jersey state senator Anthony Imperiale – who died in 1999 – carried out the theft.
The three men had broken into the Woods’ residence in Newark before while attempting to steal a rare coin collection.
Imperiale, then a local city council member, responded along with local police to the first burglary. And a caretaker for the Wood family reportedly told Imperiale that the painting was “priceless”.
The three men broke into the house again 18 days later and successfully stole the painting, the Washington Post reported.
In a 1975 trial for an associate, Gerald Festa confessed that he and
two other men had stolen the painting under the direction of Imperiale, the AP reported.
Imperiale was never charged for the theft, and – at that time – the painting had not been recovered.
But in 2020, a Utah accounting firm discovered the painting while liquidating the estate of James R Gullo. Utah’s Deseret News reported that Gullo died on 5 January 2020 after having acquired the painting by buying a Florida property from Rocchina Covello.
Covello’s relative, Joseph Covello Sr, had been involved in organized crime.
The FBI special agent Gary France, who helped with the investigation into The Schoolmistress, believes that the painting “remained in the hands of organized crime members” during the multiple decades it was missing, the Deseret News reported.
“The fact that Joseph Covello Sr was a convicted mobster supports my belief that the painting remained in criminal hands for 20 years,” he said.
After a multi-year investigation into the painting, France personally delivered the heirloom to the Wood family.
“It was an honor playing a role in recovering a significant piece of art and culture, and reuniting a family with its stolen heritage,” France said in a statement reported by NBC.
“In a world where criminal investigations often leave scars, it was a rare joy to be a part of a win-win case: a triumph for history, justice and the Wood family.”