Decades After $2M Dutch Masterpiece Was Stolen from Worcester Estate, an $18 Pillow Leads to Recovery

WORCESTER, Mass. — In one of the most unusual art recoveries in history, a Dutch Golden Age painting valued at more than $2 million has been returned to the heirs of a prominent Worcester family, nearly 47 years after it was stolen from their home.

The recovery of Winter Landscape with Skater and Other Figures, painted in the early 1600s by Hendrick Avercamp, was the result of a dedicated search by an art dealer who spotted a reproduction of the stolen masterpiece printed on an $18 decorative throw pillow online.

The 1978 Heist

In June 1978, thieves broke into the Worcester estate of Robert and Helen Stoddard, prominent local philanthropists and major benefactors of the Worcester Art Museum. The burglars made off with 12 highly valuable paintings, including works by Renoir, Pissarro, and Turner. While a few paintings were recovered in the years immediately following the heist, the Avercamp masterpiece remained missing, and the trail went completely cold.

The Pillow Breakthrough

In 2021, Cliff Schorer, a Worcester art dealer and former board president of the Worcester Art Museum, decided to re-examine the cold case. During a web search, Schorer was stunned to find a listing on the website Pixels.com offering an $18 throw pillow featuring the unmistakable image of the missing Avercamp painting.

Schorer tracked the source of the digital file uploaded to the site, which led him to a Dutch gallery that had photographed the painting in the mid-1990s. From there, investigators traced the painting to a private collection in the Netherlands. The family who possessed the painting had purchased it in good faith, unaware of its stolen origin.

Return to Worcester

Following years of delicate legal negotiations, the current possessors agreed to return the painting. In May 2025, the masterpiece officially returned to the United States. The Stoddard family heirs have since placed the painting on loan to the Worcester Art Museum, where it is now back on public display for the first time in nearly half a century.