Stolen Edgar Degas painting worth £700,000 found on a bus

Artwork reappears after going missing nine years ago while on display at a museum in Marseilles

(AFP/Getty)

A painting by 19th century French artist Edgar Degas worth hundreds of thousands of pounds has been found on a bus near Paris.

Degas's painting Les Choristes, or The Chorus Singers, dates back to 1877 and was stolen nine years ago from a museum in Marseilles.

The artwork was discovered in a luggage compartment of a bus after police were carrying out random checks at a highway rest area about 20 miles east of Paris.

None of the passengers on the bus claimed the painting and its authenticity was confirmed by the Orsay museum.

The pastel painting is said to be worth approximately 800,000 euros (£700,000).

France's culture minister, Francoise Nyssen, said she was delighted by the recovery of a work "whose disappearance represented a heavy loss for the French impressionist heritage".

The French artist is most famous for his paintings and sculptures of dancers.

He was born in Paris in 1834 and is credited as being one of the founders of Impressionism, the 19th century art movement characterised by small thin brush strokes which are used to depict the visual impression of the moving effect of light and colour.

Agency contributed to this report.