Amsterdam (AFP)

A gold ring once offered by the famous Irish writer Oscar Wilde to a friend was found by a Dutch art expert nearly 20 years after being stolen from the British University of Oxford.

The 18-karat ring, a 1876 gift from the writer to another student, was a centerpiece in the Magdalen collection, one of Oxford's most prestigious colleges in England, where Oscar Wilde studied.

She was stolen from a burglary in 2002, after which her fate remained a mystery. Great were the fears that the ring, valued at the time at more than 40,000 euros, was melted.

The ring, whose shape evokes the buckle of a belt, finally resurfaced thanks to the research of the Dutch art expert Arthur Brand. Nicknamed "Indiana Jones of the Art World" for his investigative feats, he operated his contacts in the "underground world" to find the trace of the jewel.

Magdalen College said it was "grateful" and "very happy to have recovered a stolen object from a collection about one of the most famous alumni," reports AFP Mark Blandford-Baker, treasurer.

"We had lost all hope of seeing him again," he says.

The ring will be made "at a small ceremony" on December 4 at the college, where it will become an important part of the collection of memories of Oscar Wilde, writer, novelist, playwright and poet, known for his novel "The Portrait of Dorian Gray "(1890).

- "Gift of love" -

The jewel was a gift from the writer - whose full name is Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde - and from a classmate, Reginald Harding, to their friend William Ward, from their years of study at Oxford.

The ring bears an inscription in Greek, which says: "Gift of love, to one who wishes for love". Inside are engraved the initials: "OF OF WW + RRH to WWW".

These engravings may not have been of great importance to Eamonn Andrews, a former Magdalen housekeeper who, in 2002, broke into the house, drank whiskey from the college bar and stole the ring as well. only two medals from a different collection.

At the time, Magdalen offered a reward of 3,500 pounds, more than 4,000 euros, to the one who would make the ring. After his arrest, the thief declared in court that he had sold the jewel to a scrap dealer for only 175 euros.

The story could have stopped there, but it was not counting on the flair of Arthur Brand. This expert gained worldwide fame in 2015 after finding two bronze horses from Josef Thorak, one of Hitler's favorite sculptors. In March, he found a painting by Picasso, stolen 20 years ago on a yacht in France.

- "London criminal milieu" -

"Rumors have erupted in 2015 in the art world that a Victorian ring + with Russian writing over + had resurfaced," says Mr. Brand to an AFP correspondent, who was able to see ring in an apartment in Amsterdam.

"I knew that Oscar Wilde's ring was stolen ... and that it had an inscription in Greek, it could only be the same ring," he says.

Mr. Brand then conducts the investigation, with a London-based antique dealer, William Veres. Their research leads them to George Crump, he explains, "an honest man who knows the criminal scene in London thanks to his late uncle, a former casino owner."

Mr. Crump's connections will allow Arthur Brand to collect the last pieces of the puzzle, before finally getting his hands on the ring after an epic worthy of a crime novel.

© 2019 AFP