A French museum's playful "Wanted" poster campaign has recovered a 17th-century Dutch painting stolen during the Second World War, after a member of the public spotted the work in an auction catalogue in Switzerland. The painting, "Un Buveur" (The Drinker) by Willem Cornelisz Duyster, was taken from the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans in 1940 and is now on its way back to France.

The museum launched the campaign to trace around 350 works plundered from its Paul Fourché annex after Nazi forces attacked Orléans in June 1940. Modelled on Old West bounty notices, the posters pair black-and-white images of the missing pictures with bold "WANTED" lettering, and have been shared on social media, on the museum's website and through a digital catalogue of the stolen pieces compiled over the past two years.

The breakthrough came when a resident of Orléans recognised "Un Buveur" in the online catalogue for an October 17 sale at the Gloggner auction house in Lucerne. The small canvas, showing a seated man in a large hat holding out an empty glass, had been listed with an estimate of about $3,400 and described as a study of the original. Museum director Olivia Voisin confirmed the recovery to ARTnews.

The painting is currently held in customs at the French border. Though marked by layers of overpainting and past cleaning attempts, it is considered one of Duyster's finest works, and Voisin estimates it would be worth between 25,000 and 30,000 euros in good condition. It is the fourth painting returned since the catalogue and poster campaign began. The museum is still searching for 424 missing works, including pieces by Manet, Holbein the Younger, van Dyck and Lorenzo Costa. The holder, who bought the painting from a London auction house in the 1990s, offered it back free of charge, saying he had enjoyed it for 35 years and felt it was time for it to go home.