Chagall's Jacob's Ladder, taken from a Tel Aviv gallery

On a Friday morning in January 1996, the Gordon Gallery in Tel Aviv opened for the day. Marc Chagall’s small oil painting “Jacob’s Ladder” hung in plain view. The gallery’s owner, Shaya Yariv, told the Associated Press that about twenty minutes later a visitor asked to see it. Only a bent nail was left on the wall.

The painting had been due to go under the hammer at the gallery within days. The sources do not agree on how many: the Associated Press report points to three days, the Times of Israel says four. The Associated Press reported that the work was said to be worth $140,000 to $180,000. The Gordon Gallery held the first art auction in Israel, in 1975. Its present owner, Amon Yariv, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) that this was the only theft in its history.

No source names a thief, and none reports a charge. JTA recalls that Shaya Yariv guessed to reporters that the painting was already abroad, in Paris or in Moscow. Migdal Insurance, the insurer, paid the claim. Amitai Hazan Tiroche, managing director and auctioneer of the Tiroche Auction House, says the private client who had consigned the work to the gallery received the insurance money in 1997.

Then the painting stayed missing for nineteen years. Haaretz reports that in 2015 a woman died in Jerusalem and her family found it in a safe. Accounts of the discovery differ. JTA says she left it to her nephew, who had never known it existed. The Times of Israel says her children found it in a storage room and that the police took it. JTA reports that a local dealer suspected a Chagall and sent the heir to the Comité Marc Chagall in Paris, the body that authenticates the artist’s work. The committee recognised the painting as stolen and told the authorities. Who held it between 1996 and 2015 is not known.

Migdal then claimed the painting. JTA reports that a Tel Aviv court ruled in 2015 that it should go to the insurer. The court followed a 2003 decision of Israel’s Supreme Court, which returned two stolen paintings, bought in good faith at a Tel Aviv flea market, to the United States government after it had paid an insurance claim on them.

Migdal offered the work through the Tiroche Auction House in Herzliya, to recover the money it had paid. It was lot 99 in sale 176, held on 25 January 2020, with an estimate of $130,000 to $180,000. The lot page lists a Comité Marc Chagall certificate dated October 2019. The catalogue gave no history for the work and did not mention the theft. Tiroche told JTA that such detail was gossip and not suited to a catalogue. Tiroche said it was the first Chagall oil offered in Israel for more than twenty years, as JNS reports.

JTA reports that it sold for $130,000, the low end of the estimate, to a buyer from Tel Aviv who wished to stay anonymous. The sources do not say whether this figure includes the buyer’s premium. They also disagree on the size. Tiroche catalogued the work as 22 by 27 centimetres, made between 1970 and 1974. The 1996 Associated Press report gave 16 by 18 inches, about 41 by 46 centimetres. The difference is not explained. The painting is now in a private collection in Tel Aviv. That is the latest report, dated 28 January 2020.