One of 400 art pieces that a German-Jewish gallery owner was forced to sell to the Nazis 80 years ago has been returned to its rightful heirs, including a Montreal-based organization.

The 17th-century painting by Jan Franse Verzijl, is called 鈥淵oung Man as Bacchus.鈥� It was one of hundreds of pieces that belonged to Max Stern, who was a gallery owner in Dusseldorf, Germany in the 1930s.

Stern was forced to liquidate his art inventory, including 鈥淵oung Man as Bacchus,鈥� when he was exiled by the Nazi regime. According to the FBI, the painting was sold on Oct. 18, 1936.

The U.S. courts have since ruled that the forced sale amounted to theft, and that all potential recovered art works would be turned over to the Max and Iris Stern Foundation. Max Stern, who fled Germany before the Second World War and eventually moved to Montreal, died in 1987.

In May 2015, the FBI received a tip that 鈥淵oung Man as Bacchus鈥� was being sold at an art fair in New York City. The FBI鈥檚 Art Crime Team was able to recover the painting from a Turin, Italy gallery, whose owners 鈥済raciously and unselfishly voluntarily waived its claim of ownership,鈥� the FBI said.

This week, the FBI returned 鈥淵oung Man as Bacchus鈥� to representatives of the Stern Foundation.

Clarence Epstein, director of Concordia University鈥檚 in Montreal, said tracking down Nazi-looted art pieces is 鈥渓ike finding needles in a haystack.鈥�

He told CTV Montreal that 鈥渇inally seeing it back in the right hands鈥� of the beneficiary organizations 鈥渋s very rewarding and is part of what all of us as a team live for.鈥�

A repatriation ceremony was held this week, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.

The museum president and CEO, Michael Glickman, said in a statement released by the FBI that 鈥渢his restitution event provides justice to the memory of Dr. Max Stern and honor and hope to all Holocaust victims and their descendants.鈥�

The painting is now expected to be taken from FBI headquarters in New York to Dusseldorf before being shipped to Haifa in Israel.

The painting will be back in Montreal in 2019, when it will be on display at the McCord Museum.

With a report by CTV Montreal鈥檚 Rob Lurie