The decadelong quest included archive detectives, location mix-ups, vintage postcards and a coveted art collection torn apart by war. When it was done, the Museum of Modern Art decided to return an Ernst Ludwig Kirchner landscape to the heirs of its original, Jewish owner.

The museum announced Monday that the German expressionist painter’s 1917-18 canvas “Sand Hills (By Grünau)” rightly belongs to the heirs of a Berlin writer, Max Fischer, who had to leave his art behind when he fled Germany for the U.S. in late 1935.