The Flemish cabinet picture stolen in Ontario

In September 2020, a painting was taken from a private home in Ontario, Canada. The Art Loss Register (ALR), a London company that keeps a database of stolen art and helps to recover it, says the owner told the police at once and registered the picture with the ALR. The day of the theft has not been made public. Everything below about the theft and the recovery rests on the ALR’s account, which ARTnews and other outlets repeat. No police or court record has been published, and nobody is reported as charged.

The painting is Interior of a Collector’s Cabinet: An Allegory of Sight, made about 1660. It is oil on canvas, 64.8 by 94.0 centimetres. It belongs to a type called a kunstkamer, or cabinet picture, which shows a room full of art and curiosities. Two Antwerp painters made it, Jan van Kessel the Elder and Abraham Willemsens. Sotheby’s quotes a 1993 article by Gregory Martin in the magazine Apollo, which says Willemsens painted the sculptures and the figures of Juno and the putto, and van Kessel painted the rest.

Sotheby’s lists an earlier history: a Vienna collector in 1966, Christie’s London in 1991, Sotheby’s London in 1998 and a Paris gallery by 2002. The last entry is a sale at Koller in Zurich in September 2015, where the picture made 90,500 Swiss francs, including the buyer’s premium. The ALR says the owner who lost the painting bought it at a 2015 sale in Switzerland, but it does not name the sale. The link to Koller therefore rests on Sotheby’s provenance.

In October 2023, a man offered the painting to Sotheby’s. He supplied catalogue text and a provenance. ARTnews reports that Sotheby’s checked the ALR database as part of its normal due diligence, found the 2020 theft record and told the ALR. The painting was not at Sotheby’s, and its place was unknown. The man said he had bought it at a 2015 sale in Switzerland. The ALR says that part is true, because the owner bought it at the same sale. It adds that the catalogue text “must have been obtained” from a label on the back, which is the ALR’s own inference. No source says the man took the painting.

He agreed to give up his claim, then said nothing for more than a year. The insurer AXA XL had paid the owner’s claim, so under the policy it held the right to the painting. Acting for AXA XL, the ALR later received a reply and recovered the work. It does not say how, where or on what terms. The painting reached Sotheby’s New York in August 2025.

It was offered on 6 February 2026 as lot 319 in the sale Master Paintings and Sculpture from Four Millennia Part II. The estimate was $30,000 to $40,000. According to ARTnews, it sold for $88,900. Other reports round the figure to about $90,000. None of the sources says whether the price includes the buyer’s premium. James Ratcliffe, the ALR’s director of recoveries, said the sale was for the benefit of the insurer. The sources do not say what AXA XL received after fees. The ALR announced the recovery on 23 June 2026. The buyer has not been named, and the painting’s present location is not known.