Rare $3 million painting by French master Jean-Léon Gérôme returned after 70 years

The painting - 'Shepherd' - dates from 1857 and it is now returned to the Far Eastern Art Museum in Khabarovsk exactly seven decades after it was removed from a display by an unknown person.

The chief curator of the Far Eastern Art Museum, Svetlana Zhuk, said: 'It was stolen from the exhibition in the old museum building in 1946. There was only one supervisor in the hall of European Art. 

'In this room of 180 square metres were six partitions, and pictures were hung on each of the walls. This small picture in a small frame could easily be cut off, hidden under  a jacket and taken out. One supervisor could not notice this. 

'I must say that it was a time when people were not looking for entertainment, but for food.' It was the year after victory in the Second World War and Soviet people 'had no idea that it is possible to steal a painting, sell it and get some money', she said. 

The regional branch of the FSB was tipped off that an antiques black market was waiting a work by a 'famous French painter'. Details of the seizure and who held or was seeking to sell the painting - valued at around $3 million - was not disclosed. 

Gérôme lived from 11 May 1824 to 10 January 1904 famed for the style known as Academicism. It is not immediately clear how his work originally came into the possession of the art museum.