Art’s Indiana Jones Strikes Again
I bet you can already tell from the title who we’re going to be talking about (again) today, Arthur Brand. If he wasn’t around, I truly don’t know what I’d even write about!
The Original Disappearance
So this story starts in 1974 in the National Museum of Gdańsk, Poland. A small painting entered the museum’s collection in the 1950s, Woman Carrying the Embers by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. It portrays a peasant woman holding a pair of tongs with smouldering embers and a cauldron of water.
In April 1974, a museum employee was cleaning when they accidentally knocked the small, round painting off the wall. As they picked it up, examining it for any damage they realized that the painting didn’t look right and discovered that it wasn’t the original work in the frame but a picture cut out of a magazine. Not quite sure how that slipped everyone’s notice…anyways after looking through the rest of the museum they found that a sketch by Anton van Dyck titled Crucifixion had also been swapped for a photo.
Marcin Kaleciński, an art historian, said, “It seems that the theft must have been ordered by a well-informed art dealer working with Western dealers. It is no coincidence that he chose two small objects, easy to smuggle” (Pyka, 2025). They did choose two very small and easily transportable items, which is smart, as we’ve learned from previous thefts and attempts.
The police launched an investigation and even set up an interview with Romuald Werner, a customs officer who had raised concerns about illegal art exports through Gdynia, Poland’s port, but days after the theft, Werner was found dead. Clearly someone didn’t want him to share what he knew.
“Someone didn’t want him to go to [the] police and tell his story. Then the police had to give [the case] to Poland’s Security Service, and they closed the investigation, which is quite strange” (Jeffries, 2025). After that everyone assumed the painting was lost to history and would never be seen again. Until…
2024
Vind, a Dutch art and antiques magazine, published a story in 2024 about an upcoming exhibit at the Gouda Museum in the Netherlands. The exhibition featured fire-related artworks, and in the article, there were a few photos of some of the pieces that would be on display. One of these photos was of Woman Carrying the Embers said to be on loan to the museum from a private collection.
Around this same time, John Brozius, a contributor to Vind, came across an old black and white photo of Woman Carrying the Embers from a news article about the theft, and he started connecting some dots about the painting they had just run a story on as part of the fire-themed exhibition at the Gouda Museum.
This is where Arthur Brand comes in, because of his reputation for tracking down stolen art, Brozius contacted Brand with the information he had found about the painting in this exhibit. Brand, with the help of the Dutch police, started searching for additional clues and soon found an entry in Interpol’s database listing this painting as stolen.
After examining the painting and other works by Brueghel the Younger, Brand concluded that the painting listed as stolen by Interpol and the painting on loan for this exhibit were one and the same. The Dutch police art crime unit agreed with him, “We have checked and rechecked, including information on the back of the painting. It’s a match!” (Jeffries, 2025).
The Gouda Museum confirmed that the painting’s owners, the private collectors loaning it to the museum, as well as the museum itself, were completely unaware that the painting had been stolen.
Legal proceedings are still underway and it’s unclear if the painting will be returned to Poland. The government of Poland desperately want the painting back but as of now nothing has happened on that front. “We are taking all measures to ensure that the work is returned to its home collection,” (Pyka, 2025) announced the press office of Poland’s culture ministry.
On the painting someday going back to Poland, Brand said, “It’s a great moment because of how much [the painting] means for Poland. It’s on their list of most wanted paintings, and they have waited 50 years probably thinking it would never come back” (Jeffries, 2025).
Works Cited
Jeffries, Ella. “Eagle-Eyed Experts Say They’ve Solved the Mystery of a Missing Masterpiece - Half a Century After it was Stolen”. Smithsonian Magazine. 2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/eagle-eyed-experts-say-theyve-solved-the-mystery-of-a-missing-masterpiece-half-a-century-after-it-was-stolen-180986157/?itm_source=related-content&itm_medium=parsely-api
Pyka, Agata. “Poland to Investigate Brueghel Painting Stolen 50 Years Ago and Now Found in Netherlands”. Notes from Poland. 2025. https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/03/18/poland-to-investigate-brueghel-painting-stolen-50-years-ago-and-now-found-in-netherlands/