Léonce Bénédite called Les Choristes part of a group of "acute, ironic and cruel observations ... the work of a firm, sure hand [and] just, sensible eye." He called them "little masterpieces" that a public not generally aware of Degas's genius had done well to acquire. History After the show ended, Caillebotte took Les Choristes back into his private collection. He lent it out for one other exhibit, another show focusing on the Impressionists, in New York in 1886. In this exhibit it went under the title Chorus d'Opéra. At his death eight years later, he left all his art to the state, and Les Choristes was exhibited at the Musée du Luxembourg. During World War I, it was again included in American traveling exhibits, this time to San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Buffalo. After being included in a Degas retrospective in 1924, was transferred to the Louvre in 1929. For the next 80 years Les Choristes did not leave Paris. It was part of several different exhibits devoted to pastels and Impressionism at the Louvre, and then transferred to the newly opened Musée d'Orsay in 1986. It was part of a special exhibit of Degas works two years later. Theft and recovery In 2009 the Orsay loaned Les Choristes to the Musée Cantini in Marseille for "De la scène au tableau" ("The Scene in Painting"), a multi-artist exhibit. On the last morning of the year, shortly before the exhibit ended, the security guard who opened the museum for the day found the painting missing. The thieves had apparently just unscrewed the frame and taken the work, valued at €800,000, off the wall. Investigators believed that, as in many cases of art theft, they had had some help from someone working at the museum. They detained and briefly interviewed a night watchman, but could find no reason to hold him, and released him. After that they had no leads. It was serendipitously recovered a little over nine years later. On February 16, 2018, French customs officers pulled over and searched an intercity bus off an exit from the A4 autoroute in Ferrières-en-Brie, east of Paris in the department of Seine-et-Marne. They were primarily looking for illegal drugs, since smugglers prefer bus routes to ship them. They did not find any drugs on this occasion, but inside a suitcase in one of the luggage compartments was a small artwork; none of the