Call it a picture-perfect ending.
A painting stolen from Staten Island’s Historic Richmond Town decades ago has miraculously found its way home to the museum — more than half a century later.
One morning in November 1970, a portrait of Revolutionary Era figure Ann Totten — a prominent Staten Island local — was discovered missing, along with other items, after staff noticed a window in one of the campus’s buildings was forced open.
After a flurry of coverage in news outlets like The Post and years of searching once the buzz died down, the painting suddenly turned up — thousands of miles away — last October, after a supersleuth and good Samaritan found the coveted lost object about to go up for auction in Northern California.
With a lot of help, including FBI intervention, the comely Colonial has now made her way back across the Arthur Kill and will soon take pride of place in her rightful home.
“You just never think that you’re going to see the return of stolen art, especially not 50 years later,” Historic Richmond Town CEO Jessica B. Phillips told The Post.
A treasure trove of artifacts lifted from the charming heritage village nestled next to Staten Island’s Greenbelt was uncovered in June of 1971 in a Brooklyn apartment, including a portrait of Totten’s husband, John. Ann, however, painted by artist John Bradley in 1834, remained mysteriously at large for years.
After half a century with no luck solving the cold case, Phillips got an unexpected email from astute San Francisco Bay Area collector Gordon Fine last fall, who had visited New York years ago and remembered seeing the portrait of Mr. Totten on display. He also remembered the absence of Ann’s portrait, and that the exhibit catalog noted it had been stolen.
All these years later, Fine spotted the piece on his side of the country, about to be sold off by Michaan’s Auctions in San Francisco-adjacent Alameda. He called Staten Island immediately.
“The connecting of the dots is so wild,” said Phillips.
Springing into action, Phillips contacted both the FBI’s art crime division and the auction house. Both parties, she said, were more than helpful in returning the portrait of Ann Totten, adding that the bureau hand-delivered the painting back to New York earlier this year after a lengthy investigation. The museum plans a triumphant return of the gussied-up portrait to its galleries next spring.
But where exactly was Ann Totten all this time? San Francisco-based art restorer Gregory Gromadzki, who worked on the painting for a client in the late 1990s, has some answers.
Gromadzki told The Post that the piece was first brought to him by a mysterious couple who wanted about $500 worth of fixes done. He remembers they were planning to move out of the area.
“It was badly damaged. There was a big, big rip through the image of the lady in her face,” he said. “So we did fix it and tried to return the painting to them. They said, ‘Yes, yes, yes, we will pick up the painting.’ They didn’t get back to us. Finally, they disappeared altogether.”
Since then, Totten had been cooling her heels in Gromadzki’s storage unit until last autumn, when he decided to bring her to auction.
At the end of the day, he was glad to give it back at no cost.
“If the museum enjoys the painting, and the public enjoys the painting, that’s a reward,” he said.
