The Chorus By Edgar Degas

(CNN) — French police were searching Friday for a Degas painting stolen from a Marseilles museum a day earlier.

“Les Choristes,” or “The Chorus,” is worth about €800,000, or $1.15 million, Marseilles Police Commissioner Xavier Claudel told CNN.

The 1877 pastel was on loan to the Musee Cantini from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris for an exhibition, Claudel said. It was discovered missing when staff opened the museum Thursday, he said.

Investigators were going through surveillance camera footage for clues, but Claudel said he could not offer any more information about the case.

Edgar Degas was a prominent member of the the Impressionists and produced a vast amount of artwork before his death in 1917 at age 83. His style, subject matter and artistic sensibility set him apart from his contemporaries, according to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

‘Guard behind Edgar Degas artwork theft’

A security guard has been arrested in connection with the theft of a painting by the Impressionist artist Edgar Degas which was stolen from a museum in Marseilles in southern France, a public prosecutor says.

“A night watchman at the Musee Cantini has been apprehended in connection with the disappearance of Edgar Degas’s very expensive painting,” Marseille public prosecutor Jacques Dallest said on Friday.

He, however, did not say if the artwork had been recovered.

The disappearance of “Les Choristes (The Chorus)” was discovered when the museum opened on Thursday morning.

The art piece is worth an estimated 800,000 euros ($1.15 million). Local media had originally said it was worth an estimated 30 million euros.

The Musee d’Orsay had loaned The Chorus to the Cantini gallery for an exhibition on the work of Degas. The show was due to close on Sunday before touring to Italy and Canada.

The Chorus, which dates from 1877, is a small work in bright pastels portraying a row of male choir singers on stage.

It was one of many works loaned out by the Musee d’Orsay in recent months to raise money.