[attach id=325092 size="medium"]The recovered Gauguin painting. Photo: Tony Gentile/Reuters[/attach]

A painting by French post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin stolen from Britain in 1970 has turned up in the kitchen of a retired factory worker in Sicily, Italian police said.

With it was a second missing painting by Pierre Bonnard, another French avantgarde artist of the late 19th century, that the owner bought along with the Gauguin at an auction in 1975 for only 45,000 lire (€23.24).

The value of the Gauguin oil-on-canvas is estimated at €10 to €30 million.

The two paintings were stolen from a London home and found in a train in Turin, where their holder apparently abandoned them because of a border control or some other check, the Carabinieri military police speculated.

Railway workers found the paintings and placed them in the lost-and-found deposit. The state railway company sold them.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.