A 17th-century Dutch portrait that the Nazis forcibly removed from its Jewish owner in 1937 has been turned over to his estate, the New York Times reports.

Portrait of a Musician Playing a Bagpipe (1632), an oil by an unidentified member of the Northern Netherlandish school, was one of several hundred works to come into the possession of Max Stern in 1934, when he inherited his family’s Düsseldorf art gallery. Three years later, Stern was forced to consign his collection to Lempertz Auction House, a Nazi-sanctioned auctioneer based in Cologne. Stern later fled to Canada, where he resumed his career as a dealer and fought to get back his works. Although he died in 1987, his estate, which was bequeathed to McGill and Concordia Universities in Montreal and to Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has continued to fight to reclaim his works.

“It’s a significant milestone. It’s an enormous boost to the vitality of the project and a vindication of the universities’ efforts in pursuit of these claims,” said Clarence Epstein, the director of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, of the rediscovered Bagpiper Player. The painting was returned to the estate this morning at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage.

The Bagpiper Player came to light after Lawrence Steigard, a New York art dealer, offered it for sale on his Web site. The New York State Banking Department’s Holocaust Claims Processing Office found the listing and tipped off the Customs and Immigration Enforcement, which informed Steigard about the painting’s history and seized it from him.

Steigard, who had no knowledge of the work’s troubled provenance, had acquired it in December 2008 from London dealer Philip Mould, who in turn purchased it in a November 2007 auction at Lempertz, the same house that sold it in 1937.

Mould was also unaware of the painting’s history. “We did our best,” he said. “The last thing an art dealer wants is to have a picture which has got a shaky history or a dark history as this once had.… You work hard to avoid such calamities.”

Although the painting had been listed in the Art Loss Register, against which Lempertz checks its auction rosters, it failed to be picked up before the 2007 sale. Karl-Sax Feddersen, a lawyer for the auction house, said the painting’s low value — its estimate was €2,500–3,000 — and unknown attribution contributed to the oversight.

Feddersen added that while Lempertz did receive a sales commission from the 1937 auction, the proceeds were seized by the Nazis.