It was an art heist so audacious that it seemed certain to fail. And it failed spectacularly in less than 24 hours.

On Sunday evening, a man in jeans and a dark shirt walked up to a painting by landscape artist Arkhip Kuindzhi in Moscow’s New Tretyakov Gallery and lifted it right off the wall. Then, as others looked on, he grabbed the frame in one hand and strolled out of the gallery.

It took several minutes for museum patrons to realise they had witnessed a theft. One eyewitness said that he had mistaken the thief “for a museum employee”. By the time the alarm was raised, the man had already vanished on to the street.

The painting of the Ai-Petri mountain peak was part of a popular exhibition of landscapes in Moscow, and its theft quickly became a media sensation.

The 1908 painting by by Russian artist Arkhip Kuindzhi. Photograph: Tass

The subject matter, a mountain peak in the peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, also raised concerns of a stunt. “They’ve stolen Crimea again,” went one joke on Russian social networks.

It took police about 12 hours to catch up with a 31-year-old suspect, who lives on the outskirts of Moscow. Video released by Moscow police showed a dozen armed officers wearing bulletproof vests rushing into his apartment. In an interrogation video published by police, the suspect denied the charges against him. He also said he couldn’t remember where he had been the previous afternoon.

He told police he had hidden the painting of the 1,234-metre (4,049ft) Ai-Petri at a building site, where it was soon recovered. The press service for the New Tretyakov Gallery said that the painting hadn’t been damaged during the theft, and that it would go back on display soon. Police said the man may have sought to sell the painting.