Mysteriously Stolen More Than 30 Years Ago, and Illicitly Transported to the U.S., This 300-Pound Sculpture Is Finally Back Home in France
Alfred Lepère’s hulking “Faune Chasseur” artwork is once again on display at the Musée de Picardie, in Amiens
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A massive statue has been recovered and returned to France more than three decades after it was stolen.
Members of the public can once again enjoy Alfred Lepère’s Faune Chasseur, which is now back on display at the Musée de Picardie, in Amiens, a city in northern France roughly 100 miles from Paris.
The French government commissioned Lepère to make Faune Chasseur for the new Musée de Picardie, which opened in 1863. The 300-pound, 7.8-foot-tall sculpture depicts a naked, bearded hunter in a triumphant pose, holding a dead rabbit aloft by its hind legs.
The artwork was initially installed at the Musée de Picardie, but in the early 1950s, it was moved to the nearby Amiens Zoo, reports Estelle Thiebault for the Courrier Picard. It remained on display for decades, until it was stolen one night in July 1993. After that, the hulking sculpture’s whereabouts were unknown for more than 30 years.
The work was identified in July 2025 by an unnamed U.S. auction house during the standard due diligence procedures it undertakes before putting objects up for sale.
The auction house subscribes to the Art Loss Register, a private database of missing paintings, sculptures, antiquities, jewelry and collectibles. When auction house officials searched the register for the sculpture, they learned that it had been stolen—and did not proceed with the sale.
Faune Chasseur’s recovery “demonstrates why thorough due diligence is so important within the art market, where a stolen work can disappear for decades into private hands,” says Charlotte Chambers-Farah, business development and client manager for the Art Loss Register, in a statement.
“There were no obvious indications to the auction house that it had a problematic provenance, but by checking the work against our global database, its hidden past was established before it could be sold,” she adds.
The Art Loss Register worked with the French government and the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, which manages France’s national collection, to negotiate the sculpture’s return. The owner of the artwork, who has not been identified, agreed to relinquish the piece for free, per the Courrier Picard. According to an Art Loss Register social media post, it arrived at the Musée de Picardie early this month.
Did you know? Recovering artwork
Last year, the Art Loss Register helped return St. Francis of Assisi to the Church of San Francisco de Asis in Teotihuacán, Mexico. The six-foot-tall oil painting of the church’s namesake was created in 1747 by an unknown artist and had hung in the church for more than 200 years before it was stolen in 2001.
The sculpture was located amid a wave of headline-grabbing art thefts from museums around the world. In recent months, thieves have stolen $5 million worth of jewelry and artworks from the Lalique Museum, in eastern France; Renaissance paintings from a museum in Sicily; and paintings from the Renoir Museum, in the French Riviera. At the Museum of Villena, in Spain, thieves made off with a 3,000-year-old gold burial hoard and other artifacts.
The highest-profile theft occurred at the Louvre, where thieves disguised as construction workers stole French crown jewels worth more than $100 million last fall.
Against this backdrop, the happy end to Faune Chasseur’s saga is welcome proof that stolen artworks may not be forever lost. It “offers grounds for hope that their disappearance over a prolonged period does not necessarily mean that they have been melted down for scrap,” Chambers-Farah says.
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