A painting stolen from a Scottish castle museum over 30 years ago has finally been returned after it emerged in a Yorkshire auction—and an art database was able to prove its status as hot property.

It was back in 1989 that the Haggs Castle Museum of Childhood lost some dozen or so artworks and other artifacts to thieves. Investigations revealed nothing and the loss had to be endured—until last year when the stolen painting Children Wading, painted by Scottish artist Robert Gemmell Hutchison, appeared at Tennants Auctioneers.

Currently listing more than 700,000 items, 65,000 of which are missing presumed stolen, Art Loss Register is a non-profit databasing company that lists detailed information on artworks and antiquities on behalf of the victims of looting or theft, insurers, police forces, and others.

Art Loss is then utilized to offer a due diligence service to clients in the art market who wish to ensure that they are working with items to which no claim will arise—which is exactly what happened with Children Wading.

"We're delighted to have a work returned, even though the theft was a very long time ago," says Duncan Dornan, head of Glasgow Life Museums, to BBC News' Carolyn Atkinson. "The pain of it still persists—and there's a loss to the public in Glasgow. We were sorry to lose it and delighted to be able to recover the work subsequently, using the Art Loss system."

Indeed, the Museum of Childhood closed many years ago, but the painting will be put back into the Glasgow Museums Resource Center where it can be viewed online or added to new exhibits in the future.

The painting depicts Mary Watt and Lorna Galloway frolicking in the surf in the Scottish town of Carnoustie during the summer of 1918.

The family that owned the painting purchased it in good faith without knowledge of its theft. Under British law, after six years the family has no obligation to return it—but when the selling family was informed of the situation, they decided to give it over to the museum collection for free.

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