Twenty years after being detained at the Franco-Swiss border, a Marc Chagall artwork has finally reemerged from customs.
The etching, L’Acrobate Au Violon (1924), arrived in 2005 at the roadside border as one of a truckload of artworks bound for Switzerland. French officials found two of the works—the Chagall and a 1959 drawing by Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine—were not authorized to leave the country, customs authorities said. They arrested the two Swiss nationals transporting the art, charging them with hiding cultural goods, according to the London Times.
The perpetrators were fined, and the two artworks were confiscated and stored at a customs warehouse in eastern France. There, they languished, forgotten until their rediscovery two years ago.
Now, the Zadkine has been donated to the Musée Zadkine in Paris, while the Chagall has been gifted to the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology of Besançon, France. Following the official handover on Monday, the Chagall etching will go on view at the institution in September.
“The customs service has really honored us,” Besançon‘s mayor Ludovic Fagaut told the Times. “It’s the first Marc Chagall to enter the museum.”
Besançon Museum of Fine Arts Showcasing its 1st work by Marc Chagall
“The Acrobat with the Violin” (1924), seized in 2006 following an attempt to illegally export it to Switzerland, was donated to the museum by the Franche-Comté Regional Customs Office. pic.twitter.com/RcWgGZTfcm
— La Gazette Drouot – International (@Gazette_Inter) July 21, 2026
Granted, it’s not a major Chagall. Paintings by the Russian-born French artist regularly fetch millions at auction (his record stands at $28.4 million for a lush canvas from 1928). Still, L’Acrobate au Violon is quintessential Chagall, with its titular acrobat balancing atop a violin—a recurring motif in the artist’s work—while appearing to juggle a chicken and another acrobat.
“You can easily recognize Chagall with this somewhat dreamlike style,” Maël Vandewalle, the museum’s curator, told Besançon Ici. “It’s this dream world so detached from reality.”
Chagall’s most famous etchings emerge from his decades-long partnership with French dealer Ambroise Vollard, who commissioned the artist for illustrated books such as Nikolai Gogol‘s Dead Souls (1948) and The Fables of La Fontaine (1952). L’Acrobate originated from another Vollard commission focused on painters who had become engravers, and was issued in an edition of 150. One impression sold for $5,000 at Christie’s in 2016.
