A painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger that was stolen from a Polish museum 50 years ago by secret service agents has been recovered – after turning up at an exhibition in Gouda.

Polish authorities confirmed that the portrait of a farmer’s wife, thought to date from 1626, was the same picture that was taken from the National Museum in Gdansk in 1974.

Dutch art detective Arthur Brand played a key role in the discovery after reading a magazine article about a Breughel painting that was going on display at Museum Gouda.

The article quoted the anonymous owner who said his father had bought it from a gallery owner. But Brandt recognised it as the same work that had been on the Polish government’s “most wanted” list of stolen art since 1974.

Secret service

Several copies of the painting are known to exist, but after trawling archives and Interpol’s database of stolen art Brand was able to confirm that the painting in Gouda and the one stolen in Gdansk were one and the same.

“We are 100 percent sure that it’s the same painting that disappeared from the National Museum in Gdansk back in 1974,” Richard Bronswijk of the Dutch police Art Crime Unit told AFP.

The painting and another work from the same period, The Crucifixion by Anthony van Dyck, were stolen from the museum and replaced with photographs cut out of magazines. The theft was only discovered when a museum worker accidentally knocked the picture off the wall, breaking the frame.

A customs officer who approached police claiming the painting had been smuggled out of the country was found burning to death in a graveyard shortly before he was due to give evidence.

The investigation into the theft was taken over by the Polish secret service SB, who Brand says were almost certainly behind the operation. “They were the only people during the Communist era who were capable of carrying out such a robbery and sneaking the works out of the country,” he told the Telegraaf.

The trail on the art theft and the suspected murder of the customs officer went cold, but Brand said he was hopeful that the investigations would be reopened.

“The good thing is that the case is not time-barred, because the crime took place during the period of Communist rule,” he said. “It would be fantastic if both cases were investigated again.”