The oeuvre of Artur Grottger, one of the most recognisable Polish artists active in Lviv in the mid-19th century, is very significantly represented in the collection of the Lviv National Art Gallery in Lviv, which possesses several of his oil works and dozens of watercolours and drawings. Expanding the collection of this artist's works was among the priorities of the collection-building programme from the early years of the 20th century, i.e. from the beginnings of the Lviv City Gallery, which was later transformed into today's museum. At the time, an acquisitions plan was in place, with Grottger's works being purchased from local private collectors, but also from the European auction market. By 1992, this representative ensemble had been enriched by two Grottger paintings, "Nocturne" and "Reconciliation".

They were lost on 29 April 1992, which was the most tragic day in the history of the institution. It was a Wednesday, just after Easter, and there were very few visitors in the museum that day. Around midday, two men entered the building, left a large bag in the cloakroom and then went upstairs to the exhibition rooms. As it turned out, the deposited bag contained an explosive device, which exploded a short time later. Taking advantage of the chaos this caused, the thieves removed three works from the walls: the two Grottger paintings mentioned above and Jan Matejko's oil sketch for the painting 'Jan Sobieski at Vienna'. Running out of the exhibition, they beat up two employees trying to stop them. On the stairs and in the corridor, they encountered more people who had gathered alarmed by the explosion and thick smoke, believing them to be caused by a fire. The offenders took out their guns and shot two of the men they encountered. Administrative director Yaroslav Wowczek was killed on the spot and custodian Dmitry Szelest, head of the art department, died on the way to hospital. The perpetrators managed to escape with the loot. They were never detected and the works were never recovered. Boris Voznytsky, then director of the museum, assumed that the robbery was a theft for hire. This is indicated by the fact that the thieves selected specific objects from the exhibition leaving out paintings that were much more valuable in material terms. An additional reason for suspicion is that two years before these events, Dmitry Szelest, who was killed during the events, published an album entitled 'Lviv Picture Gallery. Polish Paintings', which included reproductions of all three stolen works - perhaps this publication was the source of the commission.

In this book, the author describes the later stolen 'Nocturne' as a masterpiece. Like the second of the artist's works lost that day, this painting alludes in its narrative layer to the theme of the insurgent struggle. In the nocturnal scene, lit only by a full moon peeking out from behind the clouds, the battlefield is visible. From the gloom, the moonlight brings out only the figure of a dead soldier, whose white shirt is one of the brightest points in the composition. His outstretched back hand, with the palm convulsively clenched into a fist, can be read as a sign of tenacity in battle, even in the face of finality. The insurgent is lying on a hill, on the slope of which two more bodies are visible, but their annexation by the night shadow emphatically indicates that they already belong to the zone of death. The only witness to this scene is a young boy, a blacksmith, who has knelt down on one knee to pay his last respects, perhaps to a fellow combatant. The use of night scenery was related to Grottger's development of this artistic subject matter in the 1860s. Nocturnes allowed the artist not only to make radical use of an almost monochromatic colour palette based on delicate nuances of tone, but also to introduce a poetics of mood, as according to the Romantic aesthetics, a painted landscape could reflect the emotional state of the protagonist or even embody historical events. The battle between darkness, symbolising death, and light, which nevertheless appears on the canvas, creates new meanings, inscribing the entire scene into the topos of the struggle for national liberation, which is ever present in the artist's oeuvre.