WORCESTER — A 17th-century Dutch painting stolen from a private Worcester home in 1978 is back in the city and will soon be on display at the Worcester Art Museum.
A winter scene by Dutch master Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634) was among nine notable paintings that were stolen from the home of the late industrialist Robert W. Stoddard and his wife, Helen, on Monmouth Drive on the night of June 22, 1978. Robert Stoddard was the former owner of what is now the Telegram & Gazette and a trustee of the Worcester Art Museum.
The Avercamp painting has been recovered and returned from the Netherlands through the efforts of Clifford Schorer III, an art dealer and former board president of the Worcester Art Museum. According to a May 28 story in The Boston Globe, Schorer brought the painting to a gathering at the Worcester Art Museum that included Stoddard family members earlier in May.
Matthias Waschek, the Jean and Myles McDonough director of the Worcester Art Museum, said in a statement on May 28, “The recovery of this wonderful painting is profoundly meaningful — not only because a long-lost work of art has been returned to the family that once owned it, but because it reflects the enduring bond between the Stoddard family and the Worcester Art Museum. We are grateful to have the work on loan to the museum to soon share with the Worcester community, where it can bring something new to our galleries.”
Schorer, who now divides his time between the United States and London, including a home in Provincetown, has also been described by Vanity Fair as “an amateur art sleuth.” He has helped find several prominent stolen art works.
Among the other works stolen from the Stoddard home, two were by Pierre Auguste Renoir, two by Camille Pissarro, one by J.M.W. Turner, one by Eugene Boudoin, one by Johan Jongkind and one by Childe Hassam.
“They were, by all accounts, a bumbling bunch of thieves,” the Telegram & Gazette recalled in a 2000 story. “During their getaway, they tripped over a heating-oil fill pipe, dropped an antique vase in the bushes and left a trail of footprints and pillow feathers as wide as the Yellow Brick Road across the back yard.”
But for all their clumsiness, the burglars were never arrested.
Pissarro’s 1902 oil on canvas, Bassins Duquesne et Beringy, temos gris” was found in 1998 and was donated to the Worcester Art Museum. The work by Hassam was also located around 2006 and sold at an auction.
However, “the trail of the Avercamp and other missing works then went cold,” The Boston Globe said. Frustrated by the lack of progress and still hoping they might be retrieved, Warner Fletcher, the Stoddards’ nephew, turned to Schorer in 2021.
Following months of online research that traced many twists and turns of the Avercamp painting, Schorer found out about a Dutch couple who had purchased the piece but had since died. He tracked down their heirs and sent them a letter in 2021. Negotiations to secure the painting’s return proved to be protracted.
“The small group of individuals who supported the recovery of the painting now plan to donate it to the museum,” The Boston Globe said.
In 2024, Schorer told Vanity Fair regarding the other missing Stoddard paintings that “there are further morsels left on the trail that might eventually lead him to that quarry.”
Waschek also said in his statement, “As the first work by this distinguished European painter (Avercamp) that would join the Museum’s collection, it holds a special significance, and we hope to one day serve as the stewards of this painting, another exceptional gift of art from Robert and Helen Stoddard, who have been integral to our story for generations.”
