Rodin bronze sculpture recovered 24 years after theft from Beverly Hills

A £65,000 worth bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin, stolen 24 years ago from a home in Beverly Hills, has finally been recovered.

The credit for the recovery is being given to a Beverly Hills police officer who did not give up even after retiring from the force.

The "Young Girl with Serpent" was among the items stolen in a million dollar robbery from the collector's home in 1991.

An early sketch of Rodin's most famous work, The Kiss, and another sculpture, The Eternal Spring, were also taken and are still missing.

The 1991 theft of the Rodin statue was facilitated by the housekeeper who was paid by art thieves for copies of the collector's house keys.

Ten years later, the statue was offered at the New York Christie's auction house and transferred to London for sale in 2011.

Christie's was alerted that the sculpture was stolen and assisted in investigations.

After four years of deadlock in negotiations between the person who placed the statue with Christie's and Art Recovery International hired by the insurance company to broker a deal, the statue has been restored to the collector.

According to Chris Marinello, CEO of Art Recovery International it was detective Michael Corren's perseverance that helped recover the statue.

"Detective Corren was very impressive in the way he pursued the case. He was kind of like Moby Dick and the White Whale," Marinello told The Independent.

Experts fear that despite a huge market for stolen Rodins on the black market, thieves might melt the bronze statues down.

'The Thinker'

Rodin, a French sculptor who lived from 1840 until 1917 is known for his most famous monumental work, "The Thinker", showing a seated man with his chin on his hand.

The Thinker too was stolen and damaged along with six other bronze statues from the garden of the Singer Laren Museum, the Netherlands in 2007. It was recovered two days and required considerable restoration.

Valuable bronzes by Paul Manship (creator of the Prometheus sculpture) and Prince Paul Troubetzkoy were recovered recently by Art Recovery International, 32 years after being stolen.

Both pieces are worth approximately $150,000 each, nearly six times their value at the time of the theft.

A painting by Johannes Vermeer, the acclaimed Dutch Golden Age artist titled The Concert worth $200m is one of the costliest paintings to be stolen.

The $50m to $55m Poppy Flowers by Vincent Van Gogh, $5m worth The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt, View of the Sea at Scheveningen by Vincent Van Gogh worth $30m, painting by Paul Cézanne worth $5m and murals by Maxfield Parrish painted in 1914 with a combined value of $4m are among a few artworks stolen and not recovered.