Police detain thief of Goya painting

A New Jersey man was arrested for last year's theft of a painting by famed Spanish artist Francisco de Goya from a transport truck.

Photo: Police detain thief of Goya painting

Steven Lee Olson, 49, was arrested without incident at his home in Carlstadt on Tuesday evening, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for New Jersey.

He was charged with stealing "Children with a Cart," a 1778 Goya masterpiece. Olson was expected to make an initial court appearance in Newark on Wednesday.

A U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman did not immediately know if Olson had a lawyer. An Associated Press message left at a number listed for Olson was not immediately returned.

The painting, insured at a value of about $1 million (700,000 EUR), was being trucked to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan from the Toledo Museum of Art last November.

It was stolen as the transport drivers spent the night at a motel in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, leaving the painting unattended. They discovered it missing the next morning. Within 10 days, a tipster had alerted authorities to its whereabouts in New Jersey.

It was returned undamaged to the Ohio museum, which owns it. The Toledo museum in February allowed the painting to be belatedly included for a few weeks in the Guggenheim exhibit "Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History."

Goya painted "Children with a Cart" as a model for a tapestry planned for the bedroom of a Spanish prince. The group of four children includes one boy blowing a horn and another with his back to the viewer.