Earlier this week, French customs near the Swiss border gifted an artwork by Marc Chagall to a nearby museum in France, after it had been languishing on a warehouse shelf for over 20 years. The 1924 etching, titled “L’Acrobate au violon,” was seized from a truck carrying artworks from France into Switzerland back in 2006 because they lacked required certificates. Since then, both the Chagall and Ossip Zadkine’s drawing were effectively forgotten due to bureaucratic oversight.

The Chagall depicts a dreamlike scene with a man balancing on a violin beside a floating chicken, along with a goat-like animal playing the violin in the foreground. Maël Vandewalle, curator at the Besançon museum, said: 'You can clearly recognize Chagall in this somewhat dreamlike style, this dream world that is very detached from reality.' Issued as an edition of 150, the etching is estimated to be worth only a few thousand euros but is now the first and only piece by Chagall to enter the Besançon museum collection, where it will go on view in September.

The eastern Franche-Comté region’s customs office donated the 1924 Chagall etching to the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie de Besançon. Ludovic Fagaut, town mayor of Besançon, said: 'The customs service has really honored us.' For context, Chagall’s highest auction record is for a 1928 painting, “Les Amoureux,” which sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $28.45 million in 2017.

Meanwhile, the Zadkine drawing, depicting a man playing a guitar, was given to the Musée Zadkine in Paris.