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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Prosecutors in the Polish city of Gdańsk have launched an investigation into the theft of a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger that was stolen from Poland over 50 years ago and recently resurfaced in the Netherlands.
“Woman Carrying the Embers” disappeared from the National Museum in Gdańsk around 1974. Last year, however, a journalist spotted the painting in an exhibition at the Gouda Museum in the Netherlands. Dutch police and an art detective later verified its identity.
The Polish authorities will now interview witnesses from both museums and initiate proceedings for the artwork to be returned to Poland.
"A work by Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel the Younger that was reported stolen in the Polish city of Gdansk in 1974 has been found at a museum in Gouda, the Netherlands. How the painting ended up in the Netherlands is unclear."https://t.co/w8bpPg91wo
— Tomasz Bielecki (@TomaszBielecki) March 3, 2025
The small, circular 17th-century oil painting portrays a peasant woman holding a cauldron of water and tongs with smouldering embers. It entered the collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk at the end of the 1950s.
In April 1974, a museum employee accidentally knocked the painting off the wall while cleaning. It was then discovered that the work in the frame was not the original, but a copy cut from a magazine. Upon further inspection of the gallery, it turned out that someone had also swapped a sketch by Anton van Dyck titled “Crucifixion”.
“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,” Marcin Kaleciński, art historian, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
It was not until 2024 that “Woman Carrying the Embers” resurfaced in an exhibition of fire-related artworks in the Gouda Museum, where it was noticed by John Brozius, a journalist from the Dutch art magazine Vind. He enlisted the help of art detective Arthur Brand, who worked with Dutch police to verify the authenticity of the painting.
BREAKING: This painting by Brueghel, on Poland’s most wanted list, was stolen in 1974 from the National Museum in Gdansk. Most likely by the Secret Service. A witness was killed. Located by us in The Netherlands and soon to be returned to Poland. More details soon… pic.twitter.com/hG1FWPwOrk
— Arthur Brand (art detective) (@brand_arthur) March 3, 2025
The Gouda Museum confirmed that it had received the painting on loan from a private collector. “The private owner and we ourselves had no idea that the painting had ever been stolen,” director-manager Femke Haijtema said in an official statement.
“It is wonderful news for the art world that it has now been found again after 50 years,” she added.
The Dutch and Polish authorities have both confirmed that the painting is the same one stolen from Poland 50 years earlier. According to the district prosecutor in Gdańsk, the value of the painting is estimated at between 800,000 and 3 million zloty (€717,000).
“We are taking all measures to ensure that the work is returned to its home collection,” announced the press office of Poland’s culture ministry, quoted by Polish newspaper Fakt.
Meanwhile, Poland has initiated an investigation into the acquisition of the painting and its illegal export abroad, spokesman for the district prosecutor, Mariusz Duszyński, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
The district prosecutor plans to question as witnesses employees of the National Museum in Gdańsk and to analyse the files from the original investigation into the painting’s disappearance in 1974.
Poland's government has launched a campaign, "Empty Frames", for the return of hundreds of thousands of artworks that remain missing after disappearing during the German and Soviet occupations in WWII.
It is focusing in particular on items now in Russia https://t.co/zmwfhzuMba
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 15, 2022
Prosecutors will also send a European Investigation Order to the Dutch authorities, requesting that employees of the Gouda Museum and the collector who loaned the painting be questioned as witnesses.
Illegal acquisition of an artwork is punishable in Poland by between one and ten years in prison. Meanwhile, illegal export abroad of a historical treasure can be punished by a prison sentence of three months to five years.
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: Fred Eesnt/ Museum Gouda
Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.
