WORCESTER, MA - MARCH 6: Exterior of the Worcester Art Museum. (Photo by Bill Greene/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Worcester Art Museum board president Cliff Schorer has growing evidence he now owns a Rembrandt painting.
Bill Greene/Boston Globe via Getty Images

Art collector Cliff Schorer recently located a missing painting by Dutch master Hendrick Avercamp after finding an image of it online on an $18 throw pillow.

Last year, Schorer used a reverse image search engine to find an image of Winter Landscape with Skater and Other Figures, stolen in 1978 and now worth around $10 million, on the print-on-demand website Pixels.com.

By looking at the metadata of the Pixels.com image, Schorer was able to determine that it was taken years after the famous theft. Schorer traced the painting to a sale at a European art fair in 1995 under the name of Barent Avercamp, the artist’s nephew and student. The painting was sold to a Dutch couple, who have since died. Schorer reached out to the couple’s heirs to inquire, on behalf of the Worcester Art Museum, after an amicable return of the painting.

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Winter Landscape was stolen in 1978 from the home of Robert Stoddard, a former trustee of the Worcester Art Museum, along with 11 other artworks. Stoddard was the former board president of the museum, and many of the stolen artworks were promised as gifts to the institution. Only three of the works have been recovered, including Camille Pissarro’sBassins Duquesne et Berrigny a Dieppe, Temps Gris.

Schorer has yet to receive a response from the heirs. This month, his lawyers sent a letter giving them 40 days to respond, as well as arrangements for the paintings’ return in exchange for the sum the family paid for the work. Schorer told Boston Magazine that he would pursue criminal charges if the Dutch family fails to cooperate.

Jim Welu, Worcester Art Museum director emeritus and an expert on Dutch art, said that he always hoped the Avercamp painting would be recovered.

“Avercamp is a big name and this is a real ice-skating winter scene,” he told Boston Magazine, who first reported the story last week. “We want the Avercamp back.

Avercamp’s paintings are on view at museums like The National Gallery, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.