NEW YORK — A $1 million painting by Marc Chagall stolen from the Jewish Museum two months ago will not be returned until there is peace in the Middle East, says a letter written by a group claiming responsibility for the theft.
The letter to the Jewish Museum — typed on letter-sized paper, mailed in a plain envelope with a handwritten address and postmarked June 12 in the Bronx — was signed by a previously unknown group called the International Committee for Art and Peace and called for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the New York Times reported Monday.
The letter was postmarked five days after the work, “Study for ‘Over Vitebsk,'” was stolen from a wall at the museum.
“The investigators are pretty confident that the person who sent the letter has information about the whereabouts of the painting,” FBI spokesman Jim Margolin said. The FBI declined to release the text of the letter.
He said investigators had interviewed about 300 people about the painting. They believe it was stolen sometime between the start of a cocktail reception at the museum on June 7 and the next morning.
The FBI spokesman said investigators did not know what the sender of the letter “thinks the museum can do to achieve peace in the Middle East.”
Authorities do not believe the letter is a hoax, though they were unsure whether the motive was theft or politics.
The 1914 work — part of an exhibition on loan from a private collection in St. Petersburg, Russia, entitled “Marc Chagall: Early Works from Russian Collections” that includes paintings, drawing and murals completed from 1908 to 1920 — is an 8-by-10-inch oil painting that features a man floating above a village.
According to an investigator interviewed by the Times, officials have not been able to determine whether the letter writer is sympathetic to Israelis or Palestinians. In addition, peace conditions necessary for the return of the painting were unspecified.
At Art Loss Register, which has a database for more than 100,000 works of stolen art, spokesman David Shillingford said that art is rarely stolen for political purposes. “If you talk about theft and not destruction, you can go back many years, before the Second World War, before the First World War, and you’re talking about a handful of cases,” he told the Times.
“We are extremely distressed about the missing painting, and this communication gives us hope for the possibility of recovering the work,” said museum spokeswoman Anne Scher.
She would not comment on the contents of the letter, bud did say when it was received, “there was a certain amount of relief just hearing from whoever was claiming to have it, and it led us to hope that possibly the painting might be recovered.”
Scher said the museum is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to recovery of the painting.
One similar incident in recent years was the 1994 theft in Oslo, Norway, of Edvard Munch’s “Scream.” Abortion opponents in Norway hinted on a radio show that the work might be returned if national television broadcast an anti-abortion film “The Silent Scream.” The film was not shown and the painting was recovered, but no abortion opponent was involved in the crime.