The thieves who broke into a Glaswegian museum in 1989 kept the heist fairly simple.

Sometime during the night, according to reports in Scottish media at the time, they used a ladder to climb through an upstairs window of a museum. They made off with china dolls, a precious jug and an oil painting.

The painting, “Children Wading,” by the Scottish artist Robert Gemmell Hutchison, remained missing for more than three decades — until it showed up at an auction house in England last year. The stolen artwork has now been returned to Glasgow, the city’s museums charity said this week.

The discovery came after the painting came to auctioneers last year in North Yorkshire, England, as part of an estate sale, said James Ratcliffe, the director for recoveries at Art Loss Register, an organization that tracks lost, stolen and looted art, antiques and collectibles. The group helps auction houses and others in the art market cross reference items coming up for sale with a database of some 700,000 missing pieces.

“We spotted it in our databases as registered as stolen,” said Mr. Ratcliffe, adding that after the discovery, the auction house withdrew it from sale.

“Children Wading,” painted in 1918 in the coastal Scottish town of Carnoustie, depicts two girls leg-deep in water, with a toy boat in the background. The painting’s subjects, Mary Watt and Lorna Galloway, were selected by the artist on a visit to a local school, according to a news release from the Art Loss Register. At the time of its theft, according to local media, it was valued at 8,000 pounds, or about $13,000 at the time.