Stolen Art Watch, Art Crime New Year, January 2018

January 1, 2018, 7:44 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Bulmer Trial June 2018, Hatton Garden Death Sentence, Night Prowler & Van Gogh Recap,

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Media's Facination With Art Crime Slows December 2017

$

0

0

Scotland Yard Art and Antiques Unit re-formed

The Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit, disbanded in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, has been re-formed after fears London was at risk from an increase in the theft and fraud of cultural items.
Following the tragic Grenfell Tower fire on June 14 the entire art crime squad was disbanded and seconded to help with the inquiry.
Now the unit’s detective constables Ray Swan and Sophie Hayes have returned to the department joining new supervisor, detective sergeant Rob Upham. A third detective constable is due to join the team in the next few months.
Upham, speaking to Antiques Trade Gazette said: “We’ve already started instigating investigations, have already yielded one arrest and from another investigation have recovered two paintings, previously reported stolen.”
Upham recently joined from the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command. The art crime squad had been without a lead since Claire Hutcheon left in March 2016.
A Met police spokesman confirmed that the “Met’s Art and Antiques Unit has been reformed” and a third team member will join as soon as possible.

Specialising in tackling the theft and fraud of cultural items, art and antiques, the unit is responsible for the London Stolen Art Database - cataloguing the details of 54,000 stolen works.
The unit has been temporarily closed in the past, for instance following the July 2005 bombings. However, this year there were fears it would be permanently closed due to budgetary pressures on the Met.
Speaking during the summer, former Met Police art crime detective Dick Ellis raised concerns of a "vacuum (being) left in Europe's largest art market".
He said the effective investigation of crimes relating to the “burglary of art and antiques, international cultural property theft, fraud and money laundering” are all directly impacted by the lack of a dedicated police unit. He highlighted that in contrast to the UK, the US had trained 400 officers since 2007 and the FBI has 16 special agents on its art crime team.
Six months on from the fire that claimed 71 lives, the Grenfell inquiry began a two day hearing this week to examine issues such as witness statements and timetables. The hearing of evidence will begin next year.

Stolen van Ruisdael painting on display at Ulster Museum

A painting by Dutch master Jacob van Ruisdael, made famous by being stolen by notorious Dublin criminal Martin Cahill, has gone on display in Belfast.

The Cornfield was offered by the Alfred Beit Foundation in lieu of tax and allocated to the Ulster Museum.
It was stolen from Russborough House in County Wicklow three times between 1974 and 2002 but recovered each time.
Jacob van Ruisdael is considered by many to be a foremost Dutch landscape painter at that time.

• Art thieves hit stately home

The painting was acquired more than a century ago by Sir Otto Beit (1865-1930), joining a collection of old master works assembled by his relative, the diamond magnate Alfred Beit (1853-1906).
In 1930, the collection passed to Otto's son Sir Alfred Lane Beit (1903-1994) who relocated it some 20 years later to Russborough House, where the Cornfield hung in the saloon alongside other Dutch paintings.

The IRA heiress and the General

However, the paintings attracted much unwanted attention.
An Irish Republican Army gang, that included English heiress Dr Rose Dugdale, stole 19 paintings after tying up Sir Alfred and his wife in 1974.
All of the stolen paintings were recovered in County Cork a few weeks later.

Image copyrightPress Eye/Darren Kidd

In 1986, a 13-member gang led by Martin Cahill, known in the tabloid media as 'The General', robbed the stately home again.
He took the van Ruisdael as part of a heist involving 18 paintings but the Cornfield was recovered days after the robbery.
And finally, the Cornfield was one of five paintings taken from Russborough in 2002 but recovered three months later.

'Absolute masterpiece'

Anne Stewart, a senior curator of art with the Ulster Museum, said it was excited and delighted to have a painting as important as the Cornfield in its collection.
She described it as an "absolute masterpiece".
"Jacob van Ruisdael was really the finest of all the Dutch landscape painters of the 17th century," she said.
"This is one of his most beautiful paintings.
"Jacob van Ruisdael was so adapt and clever at painting landscapes that he really went beyond the representation of what he saw... he gives it a deeper poetic meaning."

Image copyright©Press Eye/Darren Kidd

While she said it was a very valuable painting, Ms Stewart could not put a value on the piece.
She said every museum had concerns about the security of its collections, but that the Ulster Museum had gone to great lengths to make sure its collection was secure.
Despite the number of times it has been stolen, the painting is in a "miraculous" condition, she added, although a very close look reveals that the Cornfield does bear the scars of ill-treatment at the hands of thieves.

Who was Jacob van Ruisdael?

Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/9? - 1682) is commonly considered the foremost landscape painter of the so-called Dutch Golden Age.
He was born in Haarlem, in the north of the Netherlands, and was the son of a little known painter, Isaack Jacobsz van Ruisdael.
His work is considered to be source of inspiration for later generations of British landscape artists such as John Constable.
The subject of the cornfield featured in many of Ruisdael's works but was rarely treated as the central theme.

Kathryn Thomson, Chief Executive of National Museums NI, said: "The Ulster Museum holds a small but important collection of 17th Century Dutch paintings and the undisputed beauty of the Cornfield, an important work from the Beit collection, will significantly enhance this collection.
"I have no doubt that this beautiful painting will captivate visitors to the Ulster Museum."
The Cornfield is on display in the Life and Light Dutch and Italian Painting exhibition at the Ulster Museum.
The museum also holds a painting, River Landscape with Figures in Boats and a Church in the Distance from van Ruisdael's uncle and teacher, Salomon van Ruysdael.
Although they were uncle and nephew, they used slightly different spellings of their surname.

The Craziest Art Heists in American History

Art heists in movies and on tv can look very unrealistic. As it turns out, many seemingly impossible art heists are successful. In fact, valuable pieces of art are still missing from heists decades old. Learn more about some of the most famous and memorable art heists in the United States, ahead.

Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius, 1995

The violin in question has not been found. | Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images

A $3 million violin vanished from its owner’s New York City apartment in 1995. The very valuable violin made by Antonio Stradivari in 1727 sat in the china cabinet of concert violinist, Erica Morini, the Daily Beast says. “The violin is among only a few hundred instruments that Stradivari made,” according to USA Today. Morini passed away two weeks after the theft of her precious violin. The person or persons responsible for the theft have never been found and the violin has yet to be recovered.

Maxfield Parrish’s mural, 2002

The two murals were cut from their frames. | FBI

Two panels from Maxfield Parrish’s mural commissioned for Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s 5th Avenue mansion in New York vanished from a California museum in 2002, according to the FBI. Thieves took the oil paintings from a West Hollywood art gallery. They cut the paintings, valued at $4 million, from their frames. The paintings remain on the Art Crime Team’s Most Wanted list.

Renoir painting, 2011

The stolen painting is valued at $1 million. | FBI

Upon entering a Houston home, a masked robber took Madeleine Leaning on Her Elbow with Flowers in Her Hair by Renoir. The armed robber, supposedly in his early to mid 20s, got away with the painting after the homeowner heard a noise and saw the intruder. The painting is said to be worth $1 million, according to the Bureau. This theft remains on the FBI’s Top 10 Art Crimes.

Multiple pieces of artwork, 1990

The museum is still offering a reward for the missing paintings. | FBI

Two men dressed as police officers tied up security officers on duty at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and proceeded to have free reign of the museum, TIME says. Taking 13 pieces of artwork, this heist in Boston is one of the largest in American history. What makes this story even more interesting is that the case remains unsolved. The statute of limitations has run out and none of the artwork is back at the museum, the FBI told CNN.  As of May 2017, the museum is offering a $10 million reward for help solving the mystery.

18 paintings by various artists, 1988

The thieves used a skylight to enter the gallery. | FastGlassPhotos/iStock/Getty Images

18 paintings housed at the Manhattan branch of Colnaghi’s went missing in 1988. The heist “involved a break-in through a skylight and a maneuver with a rope that could have sent the robbers plunging down the stairwell,” Forbes says. At the time, the art valued between $6 and $10 million, making it the biggest heist in New York. Only 14 of the 18 stolen works have been recovered.

Salvador Dalí sketch, 2004

The drawing was stolen by a guard. | -/AFP/GettyImages

During his yearly stay at the St. Regis hotel in New York during the winter months of 1965, Dalí planned to visit inmate artists at Rikers Island, according to the Daily Beast. Dalí, feeling sick, canceled the visit. Feeling guilty about not visiting the prison, he drew a sketch to hang in the cafeteria. Nearly 40 years later, prison guards set off the prison’s fire alarm to distract the night guards, giving them enough time to replace the real sketch with a replica. The poorly drawn replica didn’t fool anyone for long. The guards were caught immediately following the heist, according to Ranker.

Fake artwork, 1987

They ended up getting caught in their scheme. | fietstouring/iStock/Getty Images

“Antiques dealer, Nedjatollah Sakhai, hired a gang to rob a Queens warehouse filled with forged goods,” according to How Stuff Works. The art dealer and owner of the warehouse, Houshang Mahboubian, planned to file a claim and collect millions in insurance money. After receiving a tip, the police staked out the warehouse and waited for the supposed burglars to make their move. While Sakhai and Mahboubian maintain their innocence, 13 others pleaded guilty.

Planned exhibit about art dealer Max Stern reinstated by German mayor

A planned exhibit about world-renowned Jewish Montreal art dealer Max Stern has been reinstated by the mayor of Dusseldorf, Germany, after he canceled it last month.
Due to open in February after more than three years of planning by Dusseldorf’s Stadtmuseum, the exhibit – titled “Max Stern: from Dusseldorf to Montreal” – also was slated to include a stop in Israel before finishing in Montreal.
At the time of the November cancellation, German city officials cited “current demands for information and restitution in Germany” as the reason for the exhibit’s abrupt cancellation.
The exhibit will now go ahead in a “more complete and revised form” at a later date, the city said in a statement. It will now take place in the Stadtmuseum with an additional, yet-to-be-appointed curator and a “scholarly advisory board,” the city statement said. Mayor Thomas Geisel told the New York Times that the target date for the revised exhibition is October 2018. The city also is planning an international symposium about Stern to “offer a forum for research on the subject and to discuss possible forms of communicating and documenting it.”
A native of Dusseldorf, Stern took over his late father’s art gallery there in 1934 until the Nazis made it illegal for Jews to sell art. During this period, the Nazis looted hundreds of valuable artworks from his gallery.
Stern soon left Germany and settled in Montreal, where he established the renowned Dominion Gallery.
Following his death in 1987, Concordia became the base for the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, which uses funds left by his estate to Montreal’s Concordia and McGill universities and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to seek out and recover gallery artworks stolen by the Nazis.
To date, 16 have been recovered and returned to their rightful owners, with hundreds still unaccounted for.
The list of Stern gallery artworks includes some works in the collection of the Stadtmuseum and the city of Düsseldorf.

World's first 'billion-dollar painting' almost lost to underworld after daring heist

A Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece which was valued just over $100m ten years ago is now being touted as the first painting in the world that could fetch $1bn at auction.

The staggering 10-figure price tag is viewed in art circles as entirely possible, following last month's sale of Leonardo's Salvator Mundi for a world record $591m.

Of the 20 Leonardo Da Vinci paintings thought to be in existence, all except two are held by the world's most famous and powerful art museums.

One of those works, Madonna of the Yarnwinder, painted by Leonardo in the early 16th century, is privately owned by one of Britain's wealthiest aristocrats - Richard Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch.

The art world is now wondering if the duke, who is Scotland's largest landowner, will be tempted to put his prized treasure on the auction block.

The Madonna of the Yarnwinder, a small 48cm x 37cm canvas featuring a seated Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus, has been a possession in the duke's family for around 250 years.

However, in 2003 the painting went missing for four years, after two men armed with a knife and axe stole it from the duke's Drumlanrig castle, near Dumfries. Drumlanrig Castle was used as a set in the popular British-American television drama series, Outlander.

The two men had posed as tourists wanting to see the duke's collection of paintings, which is thought to be the UK's most valuable private holding.

Alison Russell, an 18-year-old tour guide, described how the art thieves had been waiting outside the castle for the doors to open, one morning in August 2003.

The pair ignored all the other paintings and galleries inside the castle, and instead rushed Ms Russell towards the room where the duke's prized centrepiece was hung.

Once there, one of the men grabbed her and held a knife to her throat. The other stood guard by the painting with an axe, warning Ms Russell's co-workers to stay away.

They removed the Leonardo painting from the wall, and escaped out a window.

The biggest art theft in British history remained an unsolved mystery until 2007 when a man named Marshall Ronald contacted the duke, saying he knew where the Leonardo was and could arrange its return for a fee of almost $10m.

That led to two undercover police, who posed as an art expert and the duke's representative, meeting with Ronald, an English lawyer.

It was agreed the Leonardo would be taken to a law firm in Glasgow, where a second meeting was raided by police and the painting returned to the Duke of Buccleuch.

The Madonna of the Yarnwinder is currently on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Jaynie Anderson, a professor of fine arts at the University of Melbourne, said Leonardo's Madonna of the Yarnwinder was a "much more beautiful painting" than the Salvator Mundi.

The Salvator Mundi, showing Christ dressed in Renaissance-style robes holding a crystal sphere, was significantly damaged, and it had required extensive restoration work at a New York City studio.

"I'm amazed at the price the Salvator Mundi went for," Prof Anderson said.

"The face is very damaged. And I think the fact that the face of Christ is damaged sort of inhibits you really liking the picture."

Some art critics had also doubted the authenticity of Salvator Mundi in the lead up to last month's Christie's auction. In contrast, Prof Anderson said the provenance of Leonardo's Madonna of the Yarnwinder was "impeccable".

"It is an important composition and a very interesting proposition for auction," Prof Anderson said.

"If it went up for sale I think it could go for much more than the Salvator Mundi. It is a much more beautiful painting, a far more sexy painting."

An auction would inevitably attract big money bidders from Chinese billionaires, Russian oligrachs and Middle East royals. However, such is the rarity and allure of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, Prof Anderson believed American billionaires and museums could also be prompted into action.

"There is competition between elite museums to make the best acquisitions," Prof Anderson said.

"The fact it is now on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland might mean that the Duke of Buccleuch intends to gift it to them when he dies. But that is an awful lot of money, so he is probably thinking about it. And if he isn't, the big auction houses like Christie's most certainly will be."

As well as the scarcity of Leonardo's works, Prof Anderson said the Italian artist, who was born in 1452, had never gone out of fashion – unlike other famous painters.

"Leonardo is very sympathetic. Everybody is fascinated with him as a personality," Prof Anderson said.

Prof Anderson, an expert in Italian Renaissance art, described Leonardo as a melancholic, neurotic and beautiful man, and likened his appeal to Shakespeare's Hamlet.

"When he walked down the street his contemporaries said you couldn't stop staring at him."

Leonardo was not a prolific painter, but he was constantly drawing and writing, she added.

"Contemporaries describe him working on The Last Supper, and how he spent ages just staring at it and not doing anything."

It was confirmed last week that Salvator Mundi will hang at The Louvre in Abu Dhabi.

There is a second version of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, which is likely the only other Leonardo da Vinci painting in private hands.

The identity of the owner is unknown, but it is believed to be an American collector.

---

Stolen Art Watch, Bulmer Trial June 2018, Hatton Garden Death Sentence, Night Prowler & Van Gogh Recap,

February 1, 2018, 5:32 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Degas Surfaces, Carravagio Re-visited, Nazi Looted Art Displayed, Plus Round-up

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Art Crime New Year, January 2018

$

0

0

Men deny involvement in Bulmers cider family multimillion-pound artwork burglary

Susie and Esmond Bulmer outside their home (Aleisha Scott/PA)

Eleven men have denied offences linked to a burglary in which millions of pounds worth of artwork and antique jewellery were stolen.
The raid was at the palatial home of Esmond and Susie Bulmer, members of the Bulmers cider family, in Bruton, Somerset in 2009.
During the incident £1.7 million worth of paintings and £1 million of antique jewellery were taken.
A total of 15 paintings were stolen, including the famous Endymion by 19th century English painter George Frederic Watts and Apple Blossom by early 20th century English artist Sir George Clausen.
All the paintings have been recovered, except for Sir John Lavery’s After Glow Taplow.
On Wednesday, 11 men appeared at Bristol Crown Court to deny a string of offences, including conspiracy to burgle and conspiracy to receive stolen goods.
Those charged are:
– Liam Judge, 41, of Crypt Court, Tuffley, Gloucester, who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to burgle.
– Matthew Evans, 41, of Coral Close, Tuffley, Gloucester, who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to burgle.
– Skinder Ali, 38, whose address was listed on court papers as HMP Full Sutton in Yorkshire, and who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to burgle and conspiracy to receive stolen goods. He appeared in court via videolink from prison.
– Jonathan Rees, 63, of Village Close, Weybridge, Surrey, who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to defraud and committing a series of acts intending to pervert the course of justice.
– Donald Maliska, 63, of Old Brompton Road, London, who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to receive stolen goods and conspiracy to defraud. Maliska was excused attending court and pleas were entered on his behalf by his barrister.
– Mark Regan, 45, whose address was listed on court papers as HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire, and who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to receive stolen goods. He appeared in court via videolink from prison.
– David Price, 53, of Virginia Court, Camden, London, who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to receive stolen goods and conspiracy to defraud.
– Ike Obiamiwe, 55, of The Drive, Sutton, Surrey, who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to receive stolen goods and conspiracy to defraud.
– Thomas Lynch, 43, of St Benedict’s Road, Small Heath, Birmingham, who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to receive stolen goods.
– Nigel Blackburn, 60, of Broad Street, Birmingham, who pleaded not guilty to controlling criminal property.
– Azhar Mir, 65, of Bufferys Close, Hillfield, Solihull, West Midlands, who pleaded not guilty to controlling criminal property.
The 11 defendants will face trial on June 4 at Bristol Crown Court for a case that could last up to two months.
Judge Julian Lambert released Ali and Regan on technical unconditional bail while their co-accused were all released on unconditional bail.
Mr Bulmer was Conservative MP for Kidderminster from 1974 to 1983. He was MP for Wyre Forest from 1983 until the general election of 1987 when he stepped down.
The art collector and his family made £84 million when they sold their stake in the family’s Hereford-based cider-making business.
Bulmers was founded in 1887 by Percy Bulmer, the 20-year-old son of a local Hereford clergyman.

Hatton Garden heist ringleaders’ likely to pay back fraction of £27.5m order

The four ringleaders behind the Hatton Garden raid – ordered to pay back £27.5 million or each face another seven years in jail – will likely end up paying only a fraction of the order.
John “Kenny” Collins, 77, Daniel Jones, 63, and Terry Perkins, 69, are serving seven-year sentences, while Brian Reader, 78, is serving six years and three months in jail, for their roles in the notorious burglary.
Judge Christopher Kinch QC said each jointly benefited from an estimated £13.69 million worth of cash, gold and gems stolen from boxes at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit in London’s jewellery quarter after a drill was used to bore a hole into the vault wall.
The men were told if they fail to pay a total of £27.5 million, each will have seven years added onto their current jail sentences, which could mean that some of the gang members, who are unwell, die behind bars.
But the Crown Prosecution Service, responding to the confiscation hearing at Woolwich Crown Court on Tuesday, said if one of the four paid an amount of nearly £6.5 million it would come off all their bills.
It means that if the figure of nearly £6.5 million is paid, the total amount recovered will likely be £8.2 million – significantly lower than the £27.5 million total value of the order set out in court.
Handing down his ruling, the judge said: “A number of these defendants are not only of a certain age, but have in some cases serious health problems.
“But as a matter of principle and policy it is very difficult to endorse any approach that there is a particular treatment for someone who chooses to go out and commit offences at the advanced stage of their lives that some of these defendants were.”
Collins, of Bletsoe Walk, Islington, north London, was ordered to pay £7,686,039 after the court heard he had assets in “liquid form” and property in this jurisdiction and abroad.

 

Brian Reader is likely to die in prison, his lawyer said (Police/PA)

Perkins, of Heene Road, Enfield, was told he must pay £6,526,571.
His barrister Peter Rowlands said Perkins’ flat in Portugal would have to be sold, but said his client, who has been diagnosed with “severe heart failure”, would have to serve the default sentence as there was “no prospect” of any further funds being recovered.
Jones of Park Avenue, Enfield, north London, was ordered to hand over £6,649,827.
His barrister Graham Trembath QC said Jones’ only assets were cash in a bank account and he “will have to serve the default term”.
Reader, who was not in court, was told he must pay back £6,644,951, including the sale of his £639,800 home and development land worth £533,000.
Tom Wainwright, representing Reader, said his client’s sentence “does not have to be very long for it to mean, in reality, he will serve the rest of his life in custody”.
Crown Prosecution Service spokesman Nick Price, speaking after the hearing, said: “These defendants were involved in one of the most notorious burglaries of recent times and much of the property that was stolen has not been returned to its owners. Some defendants will have to return the money to their victims as compensation.
“If further funds or assets of the defendants become available, the CPS will ask the court to increase these confiscation orders until the full benefit figure has been paid.
“The group’s default sentences will meant that if the defendants do not pay their confiscation orders, they will have extra time added to their prison terms.”

Kate Moss painting to sell under Proceeds of Crime Act

A celebrity art dealer who stole nearly £500,000 worth of artwork owns just a half-share in a Kate Moss painting and a £50 car, a court has heard.

Jonathan Poole, 70, who represented the art estates of John Lennon and Ronnie Wood, was jailed last year.
He made over £435,000 in 30 years, selling artwork he was not entitled to or taking percentages of profits.
But at a Proceeds of Crime hearing, Gloucester Crown Court heard his assets were worth just £15,050.
The thefts were made between 1986 and 2013 from British collectors including Dire Straits' bass guitarist John Illsley and a German art dealer.
The stolen items included paintings of Princess Diana, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Bono.
Prosecutors dubbed the case the Jonathan Poole Affair, after the hit Hollywood film The Thomas Crown Affair.
At a proceeds of crime hearing on Tuesday it was revealed Poole's only assets were a £50 scrap car and a painting he part-owned of model Kate Moss by German artist Sebastian Kruger, estimated to be worth £30,000.

'Wins the lottery'

Prosecutors said they were not bothered about recouping the value of the car but asked the hearing to be adjourned for six months so Poole's share in the Kate Moss painting could be bought out or the artwork sold outright.
James Ward, prosecuting, said: "In reality, unless Mr Poole comes into real money or wins the lottery the police would not come after him for further money."
Poole, who was not represented and appeared by videolink, confirmed he would not be challenging the prosecution's figures and agreed to the Kruger painting being sold.
The hearing was adjourned until 20 July.

Police probe links between 'Night Watcher' and 'Wimbledon Prowler' as detectives fear soldier burglar is same man who carried out crime spree over 12 years in south London

A "highly professional" armed burglar responsible for several multi-million pound raids in the Home Counties may be linked to a prolific intruder known as the 'Wimbledon Prowler', police said.
The violent thief dubbed 'The Night Watcher' has carried out at least seven burglaries since November 2014 and is said to be an expert in covert surveillance.
Surrey Police said his meticulous research, athletic ability and use of a sawn-off shotgun made them think he could have an armed forces background.

And Detective Inspector Dan O'Sullivan told the Standard the burglar bore striking similarities to the unsolved case of the Prowler, a thief responsible​ for a 12-year series of raids in south west London.

He said he saw similarities in the "high level of planning" and "reconnaissance" used by both individuals.
The Prowler is known for his ability to dismantle security alarms, dodge homeowners and scale properties.

He has stolen cash and valuables worth up to £10 million from up to 200 homes.
Meanwhile, the Night Watcher is believed to spend weeks staking out addresses to track the movements of his potential victims.

The thief is also thought to have entered some homes prior to the raids to understand their layouts.
Victims have suffered beatings by the thief and claim to have been tied up by him during the raids.
In each of the seven raids, the burglar has been alone. He is said to use a sawn-off shotgun and shows willingness to use violence to threaten victims, even when children are at home.
He has targeted high-value jewellery and other valuables netting goods worth at least £1 million from each of the seven raids linked to him, although police believe he may have carried out further burglaries where residents were not at home at the time.

Surrey Police have released a description of the lone raider as white, stocky or muscular build, about 6ft tall with a south of England accent.
And the Scotland Yard officer said he is liaising with police investigating the Night Watcher to see if there is a link between the two individuals.
He said: "There are similarities about how he conducts reconnaissance - about how he sits and watches.
"If someone sits and watches in a garden for a number of hours there is a similarity [with the Prowler]."
Commenting on resemblances with the Night Watcher's "professional" techniques, he said that the Prowler was a "disciplined individual".
He said: "He may or may not be from the military but we don't develop those disciplines overnight."
The cat burglar has been targeting homes in the affluent part of south west London since 2006.
The man cases houses, disables security systems, and uses lockpicks to gain entry into homes to ransack them.
Victims have included former footballer Nicolas Anelka, who chased the man across his garden, and tennis champion Boris Becker. The intruder also often targets homes more than once.
At his peak the Prowler reportedly carried out 20 raids in four months, but he is not believed to have struck this winter.
In a three-year period between November 2014 and October 2017, the Night Watcher, who left little forensic evidence, carried out seven raids - two in Kingswood, Surrey, and others in Maidenhead, Berkshire; Chichester, West Sussex, Sevenoaks, Kent; Maidstone, Kent, and Virginia Water, Surrey.

An art dealer who lives in the famous Exorcist House in Lynn is offering a £2,000 reward in a bid to recover a trove of stolen paintings. Roland Bachkauskas was on holiday in Spain when he received a worrying phone call from police informing him that £20,000 worth of paintings had been stolen from his property.

Read more at: https://www.lynnnews.co.uk/news/reward-issued-in-bid-to-recover-stolen-artworks-from-king-s-lynn-property-1-8348965

An art dealer who lives in the famous Exorcist House in Lynn is offering a £2,000 reward in a bid to recover a trove of stolen paintings. Roland Bachkauskas was on holiday in Spain when he received a worrying phone call from police informing him that £20,000 worth of paintings had been stolen from his property. It is thought the crooks made off with 17 original artworks and a handful of jewellery after forcing entry through the back door. He said: “I believe this was a prearranged hit because it seems to have been quite an organised operation. “My property has previously been advertised online on Rightmove and this would have given the thieves a tour of my home.” Mr Bachkauskas, who has been collecting and restoring artworks for nearly 40 years, says the thieves appear to have “randomly” selected pieces based on their age. Among the artworks stolen from the propety in Pilot Street are 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century works which are believed to be valued between £220 and £2,000. Mr Bachkauskas’ record of stolen paintings includes The Mussel Gatherers by Robert McGregor, which depicts a Breton family on a beach carrying baskets, The Patron saints of Malagas, which shows St Ciriaco and St Paula in a sunlit sky above a sea view in Malagas, Spain, and a still life of vegetables in a basket by Walter Dexter, among more. Mr Bachkauskas has been in contact with national and international collectors to inform them of his situation and to ask them to “keep an eye out” for his stolen artworks. He added: “The thieves appeared to have come in through the back garden. “There were gaps on the walls from where they had taken paintings as well as some paintings down from the walls and stood up on the floor. “They also took some jewellery.”

Read more at: https://www.lynnnews.co.uk/news/reward-issued-in-bid-to-recover-stolen-artworks-from-king-s-lynn-property-1-834896

Stolen Art Watch, Degas Surfaces, Carravagio Re-visited, Nazi Looted Art Displayed, Plus Round-up

March 1, 2018, 8:25 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Hatton Garden, Seed Sowed, NZ Ram-Raid, Antiquities Spotlight, As Nazi-Looted Painting Goes To Auction, Uderzo Drawings surface

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Bulmer Trial June 2018, Hatton Garden Death Sentence, Night Prowler & Van Gogh Recap,

$

0

0

French customs officers have found an impressionist painting by Edgar Degas stowed on a bus, more than eight years after it was reported stolen.
The French Culture Ministry said Friday that customs agents in Marne-la-Vallee were surprised to find a work of art bearing the signature "Degas" inside a suitcase in the bus' luggage compartment. The ministry says none of the passengers claimed the suitcase during the Feb. 16 search.
Experts verified the artwork as Degas'"Les Choristes" ("The Chorus Singers"), which depicts a scene from Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni."
The painting was stolen from a Marseille museum in 2009 while on loan from Paris' Musee d'Orsay.
French 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."

Did stolen Caravaggio go to Switzerland?

Mafia informant claims the painting, which is included in the FBI’s list of top ten art crimes, was sold to a Swiss dealer

Italian investigators are following a new lead in the hope of solving one of the most notorious art crimes of the past 50 years: the theft of Caravaggio’s Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence from a Baroque oratory in Palermo, Sicily, in October 1969.

In testimony to the Italian parliament’s standing commission on organised crime, recently revealed in La Repubblica newspaper, the mafia member turned informant Gaetano Grado said the painting was initially stolen by small-time criminals. The subsequent press coverage of the theft alerted the mafia to the painting’s importance and potential value. The criminal organisation made it known they wished to receive the work and the Caravaggio was duly presented to Gaetano Badalamenti, the head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission known as the Cupola, which rules on disputes between competing mafia families, Grado said.

Badalamenti then sold the work to a Swiss dealer who travelled to Palermo to finalise the deal, Grado said, adding that Badalamenti told him the painting would be cut into pieces to transport it abroad. When shown photographs of several Swiss dealers, Grado identified the one he claims purchased the Caravaggio from Badalamenti. The name of the dealer in question, now deceased, has not been released.

Rosy Bindi, the head of the government commission on organised crime, said she hopes for “international cooperation” in the investigation of the new information. Grado’s testimony has been shared with the Sicilian authorities.

Mafia claims

The theft of the Caravaggio, which is included in the FBI’s list of the top ten art crimes, has featured in the testimony of numerous mafia informants. The information they have provided has ranged from the unlikely to the absurd. There have been claims that the painting was kept by the mafia for display at their gatherings, that it was stored in a stable and eaten by mice, that it was irreparably damaged during its theft and then destroyed, and even that it was used as a bedside carpet by a mafia boss.

France Hopes Exhibit Of Nazi-Stolen Art Can Aid Stalled Search For Owners

Paintings looted by Nazis during World War II, are on display at the Louvre museum, in Paris. In a move aimed at returning work of art looted by Nazis during World War II, the Louvre museum has opened two showrooms with 31 paintings on display which can be claimed by their legitimate owners.

Christophe Ena/AP

France's most famous museum recently designated two rooms for paintings looted by Nazis in World War II. The rightful owners of these works never have been found, and the Louvre says the exhibit is a continuation of the search. But critics say the museum has not done nearly enough over the years.
The 31 paintings include French, Italian and Flemish artists — eclectic works from various periods that once were destined for the personal collections of Nazi officials and an art museum Hitler was planning for Austria. What the paintings have in common is that they all were stolen or obtained through forced sales from Jewish families.

The Two-Way

France Returns Works Orphaned By Nazi Looting, Seeking Owners Or Heirs

Louvre curator Vincent Delieuvin says the display is a symbol to remind people that the museum has not forgotten.
"Unlike in the regular collections, we've hung the paintings closely together to evoke the intimateness of a private home," he says. "We want to find the rightful owners of these paintings, but we also want these rooms to serve as a place of memory — a place where people can come reflect on this terrible time in history where Jewish families fled or were killed and their artworks were plundered."
Parisian Collete Grillot, 86, felt it was important to come view the paintings.
"I lived through the war when I was a child and it has marked my whole life," she says. "I'm not Jewish, but at school I had a Jewish friend who wore the Star of David."
Valerie Sutter, a French teacher from Florida, also visited the museum to take in and reflect on the collection.


"I find this fascinating," she says. "That they're still looking, and that they're still hoping to find the owners. I find that very touching, very worthy."
Others are not sure how worthy the Louvre's efforts have been. The exhibit has been criticized for lacking historical context and for being relegated to two tiny, obscure rooms.

The Two-Way

Looted By The Nazis, Matisse's 'Seated Woman' Finally Finds Her Way Home

Lawyer Corinne Hershkovitch says the Louvre only really has become proactive on the issue of Nazi-looted artwork in the past few years.
In 1999, Hershkovitch successfully sued the Louvre to get back several paintings that were sold at auction in 1941, a year after their owner's death. While the sale of the artwork appeared to have taken place legally, Hershkovitch argued that the fact that the owner's children were unable to attend — because they had fled Nazi-occupied Paris — made it a forced sale. Hershkovitch won.
"They've done too little, too late," she says of the Louvre. "And there's sometimes been this whole sentiment of 'why are you coming to bother us with this 50 and 60 years later?'"
The Louvre currently has custody of around 800 stolen or forced-sale paintings whose owners are still unknown. Most are hanging in museums across France. Curator Delieuvin says that's to give them maximum exposure to the public.
For Hershkovitch, putting museums in charge of giving back artworks was the first mistake.
"Curators want to conserve paintings," she says. "That's their job."
She admits that most families who get artworks back usually do sell them, so not only does the museum lose an important work, but it sees it go on the market to be bought by another museum or a private collector.
During World War II, the Nazis took around 100,000 artworks from France. Some 60,000 were brought back to France after the war, and 45,000 of those immediately were reclaimed by their owners. Then, says Hershkovitch, everything slowed to a halt.
"The Jews wanted to reintegrate into French society and the French wanted to forget about the collaboration, so there was a kind of consensus to pull a veil over all this and move on," she says.

Standingwith French Culture Minister Françoise Nyssen, Christopher Bromberg and Henrietta Schubert, grandchildren of Henry and Hertha Bromberg, view Flemish painter Joachim Patinir's Triptych of the Crucifixion, which was returned to them Monday by the French state.

Didier Plowy/Ministère de la Culture

Hershkovitch says all that changed with the next generation, who raised consciousness worldwide about the issue in the '90s. In 1998 in Washington, DC, 44 countries signed new international protocols for the identification and return of Nazi confiscated art."
A seminal moment in France came with President Jacques Chirac's 1995 speech on the anniversary of a famous roundup of Paris Jews during the war. Chirac said the Velodrome d'Hiver roundup had been carried out not by the Nazis, but by French police.
He said France, a country of enlightenment and human rights, had been complicit in Nazi barbarism. He called on the French to face this dark chapter in their history. It was the first time the country confronted its role in the deportation of some 72,000 Jews during the war.
Hershkovitch says it was huge, and that "Chirac's speech changed things both morally and judicially."

Europe

In France, A Renewed Push To Return Art Looted By Nazis

Hershkovitch says people had not come to terms with the country's collaborationist Vichy regime because the hero of the resistance, president Charles DeGaulle, had acted as if Vichy were not part of France.
"He put Vichy in a sort of parenthesis of French history," she says. "And when you put something aside and don't confront it, you cannot solve the problem."
In 1997 France launched a three year investigation into the theft of Jewish art under the Nazi occupation. The ensuing "Matteoli Report" offered propositions for finding and compensating victims and for increasing national awareness of Nazi looting.
That eventually led to the creation of a working group to actively search for the artworks' rightful owners, instead of waiting for them to come forward. The group includes the French culture and foreign ministries, museum curators and the Shoah Foundation.
The French culture ministry also has put its vast database of Nazi looted artworks, including photos, online.
Delieuvin says that database is the best way to link a looted painting to its rightful owner, which he describes as a very complicated process.
"The other day a family came to us with a picture of the work and we found it on the database," he says. But Delieuvan says most often there's no picture or even the name of the person who once owned the art.
Many art sales took place during the war, but not all of them were forced sales. Delieuvin says that if a work was sold at auction it is much easier to track, because records can be obtained showing the buyer and the seller. "If the seller was Jewish, then there's a good chance it was a forced sale," he says.
But plenty of non-Jews also sold works to Nazis during the war. If it was a private sale, Delieuvin says there's usually no trace of who the seller was.
France is still conserving about 2,000 artworks that are thought to have been looted or obtained through forced sales by Nazis. Only around 100 have been returned since the 1950s.

The Two-Way

German Man To Return Paintings From Cache Of Nazi-Looted Art

American Christopher Bromberg has gotten back two of his family's artworks. Bromberg's grandfather was forced to sell his paintings quickly as he fled Nazi Germany in 1938 through Switzerland and France to reach the United States.
In a ceremony in Paris last week, French culture minister Françoise Nyssen returned a 16th century Flemish painting to Bromberg and his sister Henrietta Schubert.
Nyssen called the restitution of the plundered work a struggle for justice and memory.
"This is a moment of pain and of hope," she said. "After 70 years and much searching, this painting has been returned to its rightful owner."
Nyssen promised France would continue to fight relentlessly for the return of Nazi looted artworks to their rightful owners.
In 2016 Bromberg was handed over another one of his grandfather's paintings in a similar ceremony.
"There's this feeling of thanks and gratitude that is more valuable than the paintings themselves," he said. "It's the society that I want to take my hat off to, that allows this kind of event to take place."

A Stolen Watch Used to Mean Ready Cash for Thieves. Not Any More

Watches have long been easy targets for thieves. Stolen off a wrist or taken in a smash-and-grab attack, high-end timepieces, easily transportable and often untraceable, could easily be turned into cash.

But that has been changing. The rise of online services specializing in identifying lost or stolen watches has helped law enforcement, dealers and diligent buyers — even in Miami, which the FBI has identified as one of the top fencing hubs in the United States (and where the Watches & Wonders fair is opening Friday).

“ ‘No mama, no papa’ — that is what they call watches with no papers and no serial number,” Jeff Harris, a Los Angeles-based watch dealer, said. “Those are very easy to trade. After all, a gold Submariner is a gold Submariner.”

To Mr. Harris, the vernacular of that underworld has become all too familiar. He was in Las Vegas last April to attend the International Watch and Jewelry Guild trade show, held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino. With about $2 million in mostly vintage and one-of-a-kind timepieces locked in his room safe, Mr. Harris went to dinner — and returned about an hour later to find the room door broken and the safe missing.

“The safe was crowbarred out of the wall,” Mr. Harris said. “The thief had wrapped it in a towel to take it out to the stairwell. He was caught on video running out of the hotel and jumping into a cab.”

Filippo Salvador Cuomo, who was arrested days later in Miami, was identified from a combination of the surveillance video and a jacket that he left behind in his own room at the hotel. His name had been sewn into the label.

He pleaded guilty to larceny and, through an agreement with Nevada state prosecutors, received a five-year prison sentence; a federal case (he crossed state lines during the crime) is pending.

Mr. Harris’s watches, however, were not recovered. “They made off with a couple of ruby- and sapphire-encrusted Rolex Daytonas, vintage complicated Pateks, Rolexes with Stella dials, a unique Audemars Piguet and other very rare timepieces,” the dealer said.

According to the FBI’s website, organized groups of thieves often use intermediaries, commonly called fences, in cities such as Los Angeles, Houston, New York and Miami to convert stolen goods into cash.

In his case, Mr. Harris said, authorities have leads to two fences in Miami. “We suspect a Miami jeweler and a known Milanese money launderer, identified in the Rio hotel’s surveillance video,” Mr. Harris said. “In the U.S., the hub for stolen watches is Miami. In Europe, it is Italy.”

There are no official statistics on the number of watches stolen around the world each year but the FBI’s website estimates that the jewelry and watch industry in the United States loses more than $100 million annually in retail thefts. Since 1992, the FBI’s Jewelry & Gem Theft program has helped the industry combat such crimes. And, while the bureau does not maintain a database, it does cooperate with the Jewelers’ Security Alliance, a nonprofit trade association that has a registry of stolen watches and jewelry.

• Taking Precautions

  Receipts, a record of serial numbers and any makers’ certificates or guarantees should be kept — but stored separately from your watches, to avoid losing everything in a robbery. Registry sites recommend that, as an additional precaution, you photograph your watches and all paperwork and then email the images to yourself.

• Insurance

  Your homeowners’ or renters’ policy may cover theft but check the details. Companies often require high-value items like watches and jewelry to be documented individually, sometimes with valuations. And even if your policy covers losses in a home burglary, it may not cover thefts while traveling or just going about your day.

• What to Do

  If your watch is lost or stolen, report it to the police and then get an official copy of the complaint. You will need the document to alert the watch’s maker and stolen-watch registries. If the timepiece is found, it also will help establish your claim to the piece.

• Just Remember

  Social media allows you to broadcast your loss to a wide audience but be aware that there is a risk involved in disclosing a watch’s serial number. A legitimate serial number can, for example, be used on another watch, even a counterfeit one, to improve its chances of being sold.

• If You're Buying

  It is a good idea to check watch registries for the serial number of any secondhand watch you’re thinking of purchasing. While such a basic search isn’t foolproof, it should turn up any obvious problems.

In Europe, Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency based in The Hague, offers similar help to businesses and it works with International Jeweller Security, a registry site.

After the robbery, Mr. Harris posted descriptions of his watches and their serial numbers online. That information was picked up by MyStolenWatch, a specialized theft-check website that, like Watch CSA or WatchFacts, lists stolen watches by serial numbers. “My watches and their serial numbers are now listed on several registers and they also come up in a Google search if anyone checks,” Mr. Harris said.

The theft-check company with the largest global database of stolen watches is Watch Register, a London-based site operated by the Art Loss Register, a well-known stolen art tracking service founded in 1990. The Watch Register provides both identification and recovery services of lost and stolen watches across borders.

“We had been registering watches since 1991 when we first started collecting information about stolen artworks as a service to auction houses,” Katya Hills, managing director of the Watch Register, said. “By 2014, we had sufficient data on watches to provide a targeted service.”

Today, the Watch Register has details about more than 60,000 lost and stolen watches, involving more than 850 brands. One third, according to Ms. Hill, are stolen or lost Rolexes and, while most of the timepieces are modern, there also are vintage ones as well as pocket watches. Users must pay a fee of 10 pounds plus tax (about $13.75) to check the provenance or status of a watch; subscriptions for dealers and pawnshops that need multiple searches also are available.

“Last year alone, we added 10,000 more watches to our database,” Ms. Hills said. “We get between 80,000 to 100,000 search requests per year.”

Unlike modern high-end watches, each of which has a unique serial number, vintage timepieces or pocket watches can only be registered by descriptions of their distinctive features. “We treat vintage or pocket watches like antiques,” Ms. Hills said. “We use keywords from the description and the image, and the search becomes more sophisticated.”

The site has had its successes. In 2016, for example, the Watch Register helped recover a Patek Philippe stolen in Naples, Italy, that had turned up in an auction in New York.

When auction houses are preparing an art or watch event, they typically check their lots against both the Art Loss and Watch registers. “All our worldwide catalogs, including online sales, are checked by the Art Loss Register,” said Sabine Kegel, international senior watch specialist at Christie’s in Geneva.

While auction houses, pawnshops and dealers can check such sites before reselling a watch, Mr. Harris said he feared that such online tracking just pushed opportunistic watch thieves further underground.

“People can still buy a stolen watch and wear it, without ever looking up the serial number,” Mr. Harris said. “Also now there are places that can change the serial number on some watches.”

Because his stolen watches were mostly one-of-a-kind or limited editions, Mr. Harris is optimistic that they will be recovered. “My watches are so unique that they can be immediately identified if they ever turn up,” he said. “There are very few buyers in the world for these watches. The best option at this point may be for the thieves to ‘sell’ them back to me.”

More than £100,000 of jewellery stolen from antiques shop after burglars cut a hole in the roo

Police have launched an investigation after thieves entered a Harrogate antiques shop through a hole in the roof and stole more than £100,000 of jewellery and other valuable items.

Hundreds of objects were taken, including a number of highly-distinctive bespoke pieces. The incident took place on Tuesday, 13 February at 27 West Park, opposite the Stray.

Police believe the thieves cut a hole in the roof of the building and climbed through it at around 9.50pm. They broke into a number of cabinets, probably using a jemmy, and emptied them.
Due to the quantity of items taken from a number of different antique and jewellery dealers, police are still in the process of itemising the thefts as part of their ongoing investigation.
However, stolen items include rings; bracelets; earrings; silver, gold and bespoke necklaces; antique pocket watches and high-value designer watches.
Initial estimates put the value of the stolen stock at more than £100,000.
Police have released images of some of the more distinctive pieces in the hope they will be recognised by members of the public.
They include:

•  An 18-carat gold ring featuring ruby, diamonds and sapphire.
• A silver Maurice Lacroix wrist watch
• A distinctive tiered silver necklace with gemstone setting
• A number of silver and gem-based items of jewellery, including bespoke hand jewellery worn across the palm of the hand with a highly-distinctive leaf effect on the knuckles

Officers have released CCTV images of a person they want to trace as part of their investigation, which has also seen police carry out forensic tests at the scene and extensive enquiries around the area.
A North Yorkshire Police spokesman said: “While the face of the person captured on CCTV is covered, we’re hoping that members of the public who were in the area at the time may remember seeing someone wearing similar items of clothing – a quilted jacket, possibly light in colour, jeans with a long belt, sporty trainers and a small Nike rucksack.
“We also believe there were quite a few members of the public in and around Roberts Street, which is to the rear of the Maplin store, and the surrounding streets and ginnels around the time of the break-in.
“If you were in this area at around 9.50pm on Tuesday and saw a person or group of people acting suspiciously, please let us know – the information may seem trivial to you but it may be important to our investigation.”
Anyone who has any information about the incident or the person pictured on CCTV, or witnessed anyone acting suspiciously in the area at the time should contact North Yorkshire Police on 101, select option 2 and ask for Amanda Hanusch-Moore.
You can also email PC Moore on Amanda.Hanusch-Moore@northyorkshire.pnn.police.uk or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. Please quote reference number 12180024704 when sharing information.

Art Theft: Munch’s Oslo Museum ‘Scream’

On the 12 of February 1994, the day of the opening of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, two men broke into Oslo’s National Gallery and lifted its version of The Scream. The painting had been moved down to a second-level gallery in honour of the Olympic festivities, presumably to become more accessible to the growing number of visitors. It took the thieves 50 seconds to climb a ladder, smash through a window and cut the uninsured artwork from the wall with wire cutters. They left their tools behind to make a swift exit, but not before writing a note reading “Thanks for the poor security”. The entire episode was filmed by security cameras. The international mass media covering the games sensationalised the incident, as expected.
In Lost Art, Jennifer Mundy writes, “In most cases it is clear why a work of art is lost. It can be wilfully destroyed or accidentally mislaid. It may never have been intended to endure; or the materials used may have proved ephemeral. But sometimes the loss can be the result of a cause or a motive that is more difficult to discern or understand. When a work of art is stolen it is usually obvious that the thieves knew what they were taking and why: to use as collateral in criminal activities, to resell on a black market and make major financial gain, or, occasionally, to grace the home of a private collector. (…) there may be an initial flurry of press reports, but a blanket of official silence quickly descends, as the police undertake their enquiries and, more often than not, owners await a ransom demand or contact from an intermediary. Typically, it may be several months or even several years before those holding a stolen artwork make any attempt to contact its owners.”  
This was the case with Munch’s work too. After a month of laying low, the thieves demanded a US$1 million ransom from the gallery, but the latter refused to pay it. Instead, the Norwegian police set up a sting operation in collaboration with the British police and the Getty Museum and the painting was recovered undamaged on the 7^th of May 1994. Two Metropolitan Police officers trapped the thieves by pretending they would buy the painting for £250,000. Apparently, it is quite common practice for British police to be involved in recuperating stolen art in Europe, partly because about 60% of it ends up trafficked or clandestinely auctioned in London.
Except for a tiny pinprick, The Scream was indeed found intact in Aasgaarstrand, a seaside town outside Oslo in south Norway where Munch painted many of his well-known works. Two years later, four men were convicted, including one who had already stolen Munch’s The Vampire years earlier, yet they were released on legal grounds as the British agents had operated in Norway under fake identities.
 The extent and gravity of art theft is little known to the general public. “Art theft and the trafficking of stolen works of art is a major criminal business, perhaps the largest in terms of financial value after the illegal trade in arms and drugs. The FBI currently values criminal income from art theft at $6-8 billion a year. The Art Loss Register – a private company that documents and helps trace stolen or lost artworks, antiques and collectables – has over 300,000 items listed in its database and adds a further 10,000 each year. The theft of artworks is commonplace, but it becomes a news item, and lodged in the public’s memory, when the works are by major artists or when they are taken from museums. The loss in these cases is shared and public, and interest may be piqued by the enormous value of the artworks and by details of exactly how they were taken – particularly if there are echoes of well-known films.” (Jennifer Mundy, Lost Art). It is true that the cinema frequently glorifies the daring of art thieves. Macho art-heist films such as The Thomas Crown Affair(Steve McQueen), Entrapment(Sean Connery), Ocean’s 12 (Brad Pitt) and many more, revel the thrill of the cleverly orchestrated operation of removing a priceless item from the most securely guarded environments.
However, Hollywood perpetuates a flawed myth. Alastair Sooke of The Telegraph researched a far from glamorous, dark side of art theft: “pilfered art will accrue value on the black market. Typically, a stolen painting’s underworld currency will be between three and 10 per cent of its estimated legitimate value, as quoted in the media. (…) It could then be used as collateral, helping to finance drug deals, gun-running, tobacco trafficking, and other illicit activities. (…) “Since the introduction of money-laundering regulations, it has become unsafe for criminals to pay for their operations in cash,” says Dick Ellis, who set up the Art and Antiques Squad at New Scotland Yard. “With its black-market value, stolen art can easily be carried across international borders.” Keep that in mind next time you cheer the art thief in your favourite heist.

'Grey Gardens' estate sues Long Island gallery for owning stolen Jackie Kennedy painting

It’s the highest of high-society legal battles.
The estate of one of the “Grey Gardens” socialites has filed suit against an East Hampton art gallery, claiming that a decades-old portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is in fact a stolen family heirloom.
Representatives of the late Edith (Little Edie) Bouvier Beale — one half of the reclusive, formerly wealthy mother-daughter duo whose lives were chronicled in the 1976 documentary — insist they have the rightful claim on the painting that went missing in the late 1960s.
Edith (Little Edie) Beale and Onassis were first cousins.
The target of the suit is Terry Wallace, an established East End art dealer who insists the painting legitimately belongs to him.
Wallace told the Daily News he has no intention of turning over the prized portrait without a fight.
“I have clear title to the painting and I have clear ownership of the painting,” he said.
Wallace says he bought the work in the “late 1980s from a very reputable antiques dealer.” But he stopped short of identifying the dealer.
The piece of art at the center of the high-brow legal brawl in Long Island federal court was painted in 1950 long before then-19-year-old Jacqueline Lee Bouvier met John F. Kennedy.
It was commissioned by the future First Lady’s father, John Vernou Bouvier III — a well-heeled stockbroker nicknamed “Black Jack” — and painted by Irwin Hoffman.
Neither side would put a price tag on the painting but that’s perhaps the only thing they agree on.
Before he died, Black Jack gave the portrait to his sister Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, known as “Big Edie.”
Big Edie and Little Edie lived together at a decaying mansion in East Hampton known as Grey Gardens.

The lawsuit said there was at least one burglary in the 1960s or 1970s. But the Beales, who feuded with local officials, didn’t report the theft.
Before Little Edie's 2002 death in Florida at age 84, she reminded her nephew and future estate executor, that valuables like the painting were filched from Grey Gardens.
The suit said a 1998 Hamptons Magazine article showcased the portrait. Then in 2004, Beale’s nephew’s wife, Eva, spotted it at Wallace Gallery.
When she asked Wallace about the portrait's origins, he told her the same thing he would later tell The News — that it came from a dealer he refused to identify who had since died.
In 2016, Eva Beale found the 1998 article in Little Edie’s records and determined it was the stolen painting she was referring to years ago.
The suit was filed Thursday after Wallace rebuffed Beale's request to hand over the painting or at least provide information on its provenance.
“After the gallery repeatedly denied its requests for return of the Jackie portrait and for information about its provenance — information regularly provided to art buyers in the ordinary course of business — the Estate was forced to commence this action,” said Megan Noh, one of the estate's lawyers.
Noh called the portrait “a long-lost heirloom, a piece of the Bouvier family's legacy and, indeed, of American history.
“The family is very much looking forward to being reunited with it,” she added.
But Wallace said he wouldn't risk wrecking his business or reputation with questionable works after running his gallery for the past 25 years.
“If the painting was stolen, I would be the first one to give it back to them,” he said.

A Long-Lost Nigerian Masterpiece Found in a London Apartment Just Set a Record at Bonhams

Lost for decades, the rediscovered portrait was a hit at auction.

Sarah Cascone, March 1, 2018

A long-lost masterpiece by Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu sold yesterday for £1.2 million ($1.67 million) at “Africa Now,” the first-ever evening sale of contemporary African art at Bonhams London. The 1974 painting, titled Tutu, depicts Adetutu Ademiluyi, a Nigerian royal princess. Hammered down to an anonymous phone bidder after a 20-minute bidding war, it is now the most expensive Nigerian Modernist work ever sold at auction.
The painting had been assumed lost for decades before the family that owned it invited a Bonhams specialist to appraise it late last year. “I was absolutely staggered when I first saw the piece. The owners, who had inherited it, had no idea of its current value,” Giles Peppiatt, the director of African art at Bonhams, told Nigerian novelist Ben Okri in the Financial Times.
The painting is “the most significant discovery in contemporary African art in over 50 years,” Okri wrote. “It is the only authentic Tutu, the equivalent of some rare archaeological find.”

Ben Enwonwu, Tutu (1973). The first of three Tutu paintings was stolen in 1994 and its whereabouts remain unknown. Courtesy of Bonhams London.

Enwonwu tracked down the princess in the town of Ile-Ife and convinced the royal family to let him paint her portrait in 1974. The painting became a Nigerian icon, a sort of African Mona Lisa; poster reproductions hang on walls all over the country, according to the FT.
The pre-sale estimate for the work topped out at just £300,000 ($266,000). According to the artnet Price Database, the artist’s previous record at auction was £361,250 ($544,042) for a set of seven wooden sculptures commissioned by the Daily Mirror in 1960 and sold at Bonhams London in 2013.

These seven wooden sculptures commissioned from Ben Enwonwu by the Daily Mirror
in 1960 previously held the artist’s auction record. Photo courtesy of Bonhams London.

Tutu was last publicly exhibited in 1975 at the Italian embassy in Lagos, and its whereabouts were unknown for decades. Enwonwu made three original Tutu works featuring Asemiluyi, of which this is the second. The other two have since been lost; the first version was stolen shortly before the artist’s death in 1994. (The sitter is believed to still be alive and living in Lagos, although members of her family are reportedly unsure of her exact whereabouts.)
“The portrait of Tutu is a national icon in Nigeria and of huge cultural significance. It is very exciting to have played a part in the discovery and sale of this remarkable work,” Peppiatt said in a statement. He said he has often been asked to examine Tutu works, but up until now they had all been prints.

Ben Enwonwu, Tutu (1974). Courtesy of Bonhams London.

Painted three years after the end of the Nigerian Civil War, Tutu was intended as an expression of national unity—the artist and the princess’s tribes had been on opposite sides of the conflict—and Enwonwu’s way of celebrating his country’s cultural identity. “He thought she epitomized what he was trying to push about Africa,” Oliver Enwonwu, the artist’s son, told the Guardian

'Stolen works' sentence of Picasso's electrician overturned

France's highest appeal court has overturned the conviction of Pablo Picasso's former electrician and his wife, who were given suspended sentences for keeping 271 of his works in their garage for four decades.

'Stolen works' sentence of Picasso's electrician overturned

Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec were given two-year suspended jail sentences in 2015 for possession of stolen goods, in a case that made headlines worldwide.
A higher court upheld the verdict in 2016 but the Cour de Cassation, in a ruling seen by AFP Thursday, overturned it.
Ruling there was insufficient evidence that "the goods held by the suspects had been stolen" the court ordered a retrial.
The couple's lawyer Antoine Vey hailed the ruling.
"It's a great decision which reinforces the line that Le Guennecs have always upheld -- that there was no theft whatsoever."
The retrial will offer them "a huge opportunity to finally establish the truth", Vey said.
The collection, whose value has not been assessed, includes drawings of women and horses, nine rare Cubist collages from the time Picasso was working with fellow French artist Georges Braque and a work from his famous "blue period".
At his original trial Le Guennec, who is in his late seventies, claimed that Picasso had presented him with the artworks towards the end of his life to reward him for his loyal service.
But he later changed his account, telling the appeal court that the works were part of a huge trove of art that Picasso's widow Jacqueline asked him to conceal after the artist's death in 1973.
Le Guennec said he stored more than a dozen garbage bags of unsigned works which Jacqueline later retrieved, except for one which she left him saying: "Keep this, it's for you."
The affair came to light when Pierre Le Guennec attempted to get the works authenticated by Picasso's son Claude Ruiz-Picasso in 2010.
The artist's heirs promptly filed a complaint against him, triggering an investigation.

Stolen Art Watch, Hatton Garden, Seed Sowed, NZ Ram-Raid, Antiquities Spotlight, As Nazi-Looted Painting Goes To Auction, Uderzo Drawings surface

April 3, 2018, 6:46 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, 2018, May The Force Be With Your Heart

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Degas Surfaces, Carravagio Re-visited, Nazi Looted Art Displayed, Plus Round-up

$

0

0

Hatton Garden 'mastermind' is the son of 'genius' Cambridge biophysicist: 'Basil the ghost's' father pioneered study of DNA as aunt slams claims against him as 'outlandish'

• 'Final' Hatton Garden suspect is the son of a top Cambridge biophysicist
• Police say they found jewellery and gold at his north London flat 
• He appeared in court yesterday and his lawyer said he is a jeweller
• His aunt has insisted he is not behind the raid and the charges are 'outlandish'

The man alleged to be the mastermind behind the Hatton Garden jewel heist is the son of a Cambridge scientist, it was revealed last night.

Michael Seed is accused of being 'Basil the Ghost', the only burglar who evaded capture following the notorious £25million raid over the Easter weekend of 2015.

He was arrested on Tuesday at a run-down council flat less than two miles from Hatton Garden vault with what is alleged to be property from the burglary. 

Police say they found a large amount of jewellery, precious stones and gold ingots. 

+8

Michael Seed, a jeweller suspected of being the final member of the Hatton Garden gang,  appeared in court today

+8

+8

A court sketch of Seed, who was remanded in custody until he can appear before a judge next month. The £25million raid on the safety deposit box firm (right) was one of the most audacious in British criminal history

Officers have spent three years hunting the masked figure seen on CCTV walking away from the raid with a bin bag full of cash, gems, gold and jewellery.

A man known as 'Basil' was seen using a key to enter the building and is believed to have disabled the alarm system.

Detectives believe that 'Basil' was one of only two raiders who crawled into the vault to ransack deposit boxes after a hole was bored in a basement wall. He stayed on the wanted list as six accomplices were jailed for up to seven years each.

Yesterday, grey-haired Seed, 57, appeared in court on two charges related to the raid. 

The son of biophysicist John Seed - who taught himself to degree level before taking a PhD at Christ Church, Cambridge - his background is a far cry from that of the mainly elderly working-class members of the gang nicknamed the 'diamond wheezers'.

Seed himself is understood to have studied sciences at the University of Nottingham. 

Seed's aunt Kathleen Seed last night questioned whether he was involved in the raid. She told The Times: 'The idea of him being a safebreaker is outlandish.'

+8

A CCTV still shows a Hatton Garden raider said to have got away after the jewellery raid

The official value of the record-breaking haul is £13.7million, but police suspect it could be as high as £25million as much of the cash, foreign currency, gems and gold in the underground vault was never declared by the owners.

Facing charges of conspiracy to burgle and conspiracy to conceal or disguise criminal property, Seed appeared before City of Westminster magistrates in a green jacket, blue checked shirt and jeans and spoke only to confirm his name, age, address and nationality.

His barrister, James Reilly, suggested he would deny the offences, saying: 'He works as a jeweller - he fashions jewellery. 

He had no knowledge or belief of involvement with the burglary.' Prosecutor Philip Stott said: 'The charges relate to the burglary of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit company over Easter weekend in 2015.

'Mr Seed was arrested and inside [the] address was a large number of items of jewellery, precious stones and golden ingots. It's an amount consistent with Mr Seed having been involved in the burglary.

'There are covert audio recordings of others involved, describing the role of others in the team, who refer to [an accomplice] by the pseudonym Basil.'

+8

Officers from Scotland Yard's Flying Squad raided Seed's flat in Islington last week

+8

Neighbours in the block of flats said Seed seemed like a nice man but was not well known

There was no application for bail and after chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot remanded him in custody Seed, who had followed the proceedings attentively, smiled, nodded and bowed to the bench before being led away.

Later, on the Mersey Estate in Islington, rubber gloves and large bottles of chemicals could be seen in the kitchen of the small flat where he was arrested. 

Neighbours said Seed was a 'pleasant man' but suspected he was down on his luck because he wore the same clothes every day.

A caretaker on the estate said: 'He was Mr Invisible, Mr Anonymous, but he was very pleasant and would always say good morning.' 

Seed's father has been dead for some years while his 90-year-old mother still lives in Cambridge. He has three siblings. 

His aunt Kathleen Seed, 83, who lives in Nottingham, said: 'The thought of Michael being a bank robber is so remote, I would find that so highly unlikely.'

+8

The hole the gang drilled through the wall of a vault beneath London's diamond quarter

+8

The scene inside the vault after the raid took place in over the Easter weekend three years ago

Art gallery ram-raid: No sign of paintings one year on

It's been a year since robbers ram raided an Auckland Auctioneers and fled with two valuable paintings by artist Gottfried Lindauer.

The 'Chieftainess Ngatai-Raure' and 'Chief Ngatai-Raure' (inset) were stolen from the International Art Centre in Parnell on 1 April last year. Photo: RNZ / Laura Tupou

However their whereabouts, and who exactly was behind the heist remain a mystery.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, 1 April last year, a window in the front of the International Art Gallery shattered as a car backed into the building.
Alarms went off but by the time people arrived two 1884 Gottfried Lindauer paintings known as Chieftainess Ngatai-Raure and Chief Ngatai-Raure were gone.
A year on the centre's director Richard Thomson said they were still no closer to finding them.
"There's no news about the paintings... For us it's still as big a mystery as it is to a lot of people."
It took several months for the $50,000 to $100,000 worth of damage to the building to be fully repaired and security measures have been ramped up.
They will be on show this week as works from Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's personal collection go up for auction, including three major paintings by Charles Frederick Goldie.
"There's a couple of really serious things that we've done that we've talked to the insurance company about.
"We've got 24 hour monitoring on foot, so after hours we've got an actual guard on at the moment until the auction is finished. The security is obviously quite high."
Mr Thomson said he believed the paintings hadn't left the country.
"A lot of people say 'oh they'll be overseas hanging on a wall in Shanghai or somewhere' but I really believe that's unlikely ... Everyone's speculating and who knows, they might just turn up. They could turn up in half an hour, they could turn up this time next year, we just don't know."
However, he said it wasn't something he'd like to dwell on.
"That's not how I live my life. The only person dwelling on that situation is the people that took them. They'll be living in fear and they'll have problems so their day will come."
Art historian and art crime expert Penelope Jackson said the art community was more aware now and it demonstrated to the country that New Zealand wasn't immune to these sorts of crimes.
"This terrible event had all the ingredients, all the sensational ingredients really, that you might get in a movie. Night time, smash and grab, highly valuable works and when I say valuable I mean not just monetary valuable but culturally valuable. That there were two get away vehicles etc."
While nothing is for certain, she said the paintings were more likely to still be in the country with their cultural significance and history meaning there's a bigger market for them here.
"New Zealand's too small, there'll be something that happens that will be a catalyst that will lead someone or the police to find those works."
She said many famous paintings have been found again in the past, in late 2016 two Vincent van Gogh paintings were found in Naples after being stolen from a public art museum in Amsterdam 14 years earlier.
Ms Jackson said many were worried about what condition they would be in if they did turn up.
"You've got paintings there that are 134 years old now so they're very vulnerable.
"They were moved quickly, there was broken glass involved, there was speeding vehicles, and if you think about how in an art museum context works are moved, you know not when the public are there, on cushioned trolleys, white gloves, lots of people, very carefully, very slowly, and this was the complete opposite."

Two Spaniards arrested over smuggling of artifacts looted by ISIS

Some of the artworks have been traced to the Cyrene archaeological site in northern Libya.

Spanish police have arrested two men for allegedly smuggling pieces of art looted by groups affiliated with ISIS from sites in Libya.

Authorities there believe this to be the first ever police operation against the financing of terrorism through the looting of art.

The suspects, both 31-year-old Spanish nationals, are art experts who bought the pieces -- known in the market as "blood antiquities" -- to sell in their gallery, according to a police statement Wednesday that did not specify where the gallery was located. Police named them only as Mr. O.C.P and Mr. J.B.P.

Police recovered a number of artworks after searching five locations.

They were arrested in Barcelona for their "alleged participation in the crimes of financing terrorism, belonging to a criminal organization, trading in stolen goods, smuggling and forging documents."

Mosul offensive: Assyrian artifacts discovered in abandoned ISIS tunnels

The statement said that the suspects were part of a Catalonia-based network with international reach dedicated to the retail of artworks from territories controlled by groups affiliated to ISIS.

The two men used foreign intermediaries to acquire the artworks, and concealed the origin of the goods by dispatching them from Asia and different parts of the Middle East, police said.

After searching five locations, including storage facilities and the gallery where some looted pieces were on sale to the public, police recovered artworks including sculptures, mosaics and sarcophagi.

With the help of the Libyan authorities, police verified the authenticity of the pieces and traced their origin to the Apollonia and Cyrene archaeological sites in northern Libya, both of which have been looted by terrorist groups.

The recovered items included sculptures and mosaics.

Some of the recovered pieces showed imperfections such as bumps and dents that suggested they had been extracted from the ground violently and transported insecurely, police said.

Police believe the suspects carried out restoration work on the artworks in Spain in an attempt to disguise the damage.

After ISIS, Iraq needs $88.2 billion to rebuild

Members of ISIS have destroyed or looted a number of ancient cultural treasures in Syria and Iraq, often posting videos of their vandalism online.

In 2015, the FBI asked art collectors and dealers to look out for antiquities that could have been put on the market by ISIS.

The warning came after "credible reports" that some Americans had been offered cultural items that seemed to have been taken from Syria and Iraq, according to a statement at the time from Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, who was then manager of the FBI's Art Theft Program.

Nazi-looted Cranach painting returned to rightful heirs to be sold at Christie’s Old Masters auction

An Old Master portrait missing for nearly 80 years has been returned to the heirs of Dutch banker and art collector Fritz Gutmann. They now plan to auction the picture with an estimate of $1m-2m.

'Portrait of John Frederick I, elector of Saxony' by Lucas Cranach the Elder measuring 24¾ x 15⅝ in (62.8 x 39.7 cm). Image from Christie's.

Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Portrait of John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony was last publicly displayed in Rotterdam in 1938.
Gutmann’s vast collection in his home to the west of Amsterdam was stolen by the Nazis in 1940, with many works acquired for Hitler and Goering. Gutmann and his wife Louise were arrested in 1943 and died in the camps of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz a year later.
But after its former owner acknowledged it had been stolen, Gutmann’s heirs, with the help of experts at Christie’s, negotiated its return.
The half-length oil on panel will now be offered at Christie’s Old Masters auction on April 19 in New York.
Simon Goodman, Fritz Gutmann’s grandson and owner of the Cranach painting, said: “I have spent years hunting for this marvellous painting. Among those pieces still missing from my grandfather’s collection, this was the piece I was the most doubtful of ever recovering. My family are thrilled by its discovery. We are also extremely grateful to the people who brought it forward and to Christie’s for facilitating its return.”
Monica Dugot, international director of restitution at Christie’s, said: “We hope that the reappearance of this painting demonstrates that with goodwill, perseverance and collaboration, amicable and fair solutions can be found in resolving complex restitution cases and losses due to Nazi persecution, even after so many years.”
The portrait, painted in the 1530s, depicts John Frederick I (1503-54), an electoral prince and head of the Schmalkaldic League of Germany - a defensive alliance formed by Protestant territories. John Frederick was an ardent supporter of Martin Luther and the Reformation, and is considered to be one of the founders of the University of Wittenberg.
He married Sibylle of Cleves in September 1526, whom Cranach also portrayed on numerous occasions. According to Christie’s, this painting is one of Cranach’s most refined depictions of John Frederick, who at the time of painting was the artist’s greatest patron and close friend.

Belgian Police Discover 84 Pages of Stolen Albert Uderzo Art in Forest

It feels something that might have actually happened in an Asterix comic, to be followed by a lot of dead wild boar. But it appears that Belgian police have discovered 84 stolen pieces of art by Asterix co-creator Albert Uderzo, secreted in a forest. Or, rather, the town of Forest.

Eighty-four original drawings were found during a search of the town earlier this month. The art was reported stolen last year after being discovered being sold at auction in Belgium as part of what was called ‘The Rackham Collection’. But after the auction, the art — and the sellers — disappeared.
At the time, Uderzo said the pieces were either stolen, or lent out in 2012 and not returned. The owner of the auction house, Alain Huberty, while holding an investigation to determine the origin of the art pieces, stated that he knew the seller is honest, and that any statement from Uderzo that the art disappeared in 2012 is false. And the owner reported they had owned them for 30 years, and no police complaint has been filed.
But the gendarmes were on the hunt. And it was the French police who discovered their location, and worked with Belgian authorities to organise a raid within 24 hours.
Denis Goeman, spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor’s office, put the speed down to Getafix’s magic potion.
The stolen drawings are some of Uderzo’s earliest and predate Asterix, from the ’40s to the ’60s, including childhood drawings, he worked on the Captain Marvel Jr character and also Castagnac, a forerunner of Asterix.
The countries have different laws over art ownership, as a result of the theft of Jewish property during the Second World War. In France, owners of art are obliged to disclose how they acquired them, but not in Belgium. Uderzo describes Belgium as being “a little curious country for not having similar legislation,” which would have prevented the pages being put up for sale in the first place.
Asterix pages and covers regularly sell for six or seven figures, and while these artworks are worth less, in total they would be worth many millions.
No one has yet been charged or arrested and the French investigation continues.

Stolen Art Watch, 2018, May The Force Be With Your Heart

May 1, 2018, 3:50 pm

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Caravaggio Nativity Lives, Flamming June 2018

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Hatton Garden, Seed Sowed, NZ Ram-Raid, Antiquities Spotlight, As Nazi-Looted Painting Goes To Auction, Uderzo Drawings surface

$

0

0

800-year-old stolen saint’s heart returned to Dublin cathedral

People observe the heart of St Laurence O’Toole at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin

The 800-year-old heart of Dublin’s patron saint has been recovered by police, six years after it was stolen from a cathedral in the city.
The relic – the heart of St Laurence O’Toole – was taken from Christ Church Cathedral in 2012.
It has no monetary value but is “a priceless treasure” for the church, the cathedral’s Dean, the Very Reverend Dermot Dunne, said.
The theft of the relic, which had been kept in a wooden heart-shaped box and placed within a small iron-barred cage, sparked a six-year investigation by Gardai.

It will be presented to the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Reverend Dr Michael Jackson on Thursday evening by Garda Assistant Commissioner Pat Leahy.
Archbishop Jackson thanked those who had helped recover the relic, and described the return of the heart as a joyful moment for the people of the city.
He said: “The return of the heart of Laurence O’Toole to Christ Church Cathedral brings great joy to the people of Dublin as Dubliners.
“For those of us associated with the life of the dioceses, it brings again to the fore the close relationship between Glendalough and Dublin, a relationship of more than 800 years.

 

People line up to observe the heart of St Laurence O’Toole

“Laurence left the monastic city of Glendalough of which he was Abbot to become Archbishop of Dublin, hence cementing a vibrant relationship that continues unabated to this day.”
Rev Dunne said he was “delighted” at the relic’s return.
He said: “I said at the time it was stolen that the relic has no economic value but it is a priceless treasure that links the cathedral’s present foundation with its founding father, St Laurence O’Toole.”
Assistant Commissioner Leahy commended officers who he said had “kept their radars on and their minds open in this ongoing investigation”.
Gardai said no arrests have been made.
There will now be a shrine to St Laurence, who died in 1180, in the cathedral, the church said, noting that they had looked at their security since the theft and continue to have regular reviews.

Stolen Art Surrendered After Criminal Group’s Heist Decades Ago

The Federal Bureau of Investigation recovered a prized painting from a decades-old art heist in New York City, thanks to the guilty conscience of an aging organized crime figure, the agency announced.

The painting, a Chagall from 1911 titled “Othello and Desdemona” was stolen in 1988 along with several other invaluable artifacts and artworks including those of Renoir, Hopper, and Picasso.

The heist was executed over the course of several days; the thieves entered the 16th-floor loft of Ernest and Rose Heller—wealthy art collectors who were in Aspen for their annual two-month vacation-- and left without a single trace. No arrests were ever made, and none of the artworks have been recovered until now.

A 72-year old, terminally-ill man with ties to Bulgarian criminal groups contacted the FBI’s Art Crime Unit in Washington, DC to hand over the painting and clear his conscience before his death, according to an FBI report.

The unnamed man claimed to have been contracted to sell the painting in the early nineties and once he found an interested buyer, the person who contracted him—one of thieves-- tried to cut him out of the deal. In retaliation, he stole the painting and stored it in his attic in Maryland, which police found to be kept in a makeshift paper box titled “Misc High School Artwork.”

At the time of the theft, the painting was worth US$750,000. In 2018, it’s value is estimated to be well over the million-dollar mark.

At one point, the 72-year old attempted to sell the painting to a gallery without proof of ownership.

“The gallery refused to accept the painting,” the press release states.

“They suggested that the individual contact law enforcement, which resulted in the FBI obtaining custody of the painting.”

The man who contracted the 72-year old was one of the masterminds of the heist. He had a degree in fine arts and worked as a superintendent in the building that was burglarized. He was later convicted of similar crimes and is now in prison.

The statute of limitations on the heist expired years ago and no charges are being filed against the known thief or the man who surrendered the painting. The artwork will be returned to the Heller estate.

Dutch Old Master stolen by Nazis to go to auction

It is due to goes on auction on July 4 in London with a pre-sale estimate of £1.5-2.5 million.

A Dutch Old Master painting stolen by the Nazis towards the end of World War II is to be auctioned after it was discovered hanging in the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London.

The Oyster Meal by Jacob Ochtervelt was put on show in the Amsterdam offices of auction house Sotheby’s.
It is due to goes on auction on July 4 in London with a pre-sale estimate of £1.5-2.5 million.

Charlotte Bischoff van Heemskerck, the 97-year-old daughter of the Arnhem children’s doctor who originally owned the painting, says that as a child she loved the light blue dress and fur-trimmed red coat worn by the girl being offered a plate of oysters by her suitor.
Ochtervelt’s oil on canvas masterpiece, from 1664-65, shows a man presenting a plate of oysters to a warmly-lit, seated young woman.
“I loved it,” Ms Bischoff van Heemskerck said. “I was a young girl; I liked her dress, I liked her coat with the white fur and the way he offered her the oysters.”
Ms Bischoff van Heemskerck was reunited with the painting last year at a ceremony in London, now she has decided to sell it to pass on the proceeds to the children of her siblings.
After the war, the painting changed hands several times before the family tracked it down.
It resurfaced in the mid-1950s at a gallery in the German city of Duesseldorf. It was later bought by an American diplomat before British property developer Harold Samuel bought it in 1971 and later bequeathed it to the City of London Corporation.
Ms Bischoff van Heemskerck said tracking down the missing art was not a priority in the immediate aftermath of the war, as her father sought to re-establish his children’s hospital.
“My father said, ‘we won’t talk about the missing things’,” she said. “We will just live again.”

New York judge awards Egon Schiele art to Holocaust heirs

A New York judge has awarded two Nazi-looted drawings to the heirs of an Austrian Holocaust victim.

The drawings - Woman Hiding Her Face and Woman in a Black Pinafore by Egon Schiele - will go to the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum, killed in Dachau concentration camp in 1941.
The Nazis confiscated Grunbaum's 449-piece art collection when he was arrested in 1938.
London-based art dealer Richard Nagy had claimed a legal title to the works.
He had exhibited the drawings at a 2015 art show in New York, where the heirs discovered the art was up for sale.

• 'We should give back art looted by the Nazis'
• Is this your family's lost 'Nazi art'?

Mr Nagy said he had bought them legally. But the Manhattan state court ruled against him, citing the 2016 Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (Hear) Act.

Image copyrightEgon Schiele/Leopold Museum

The act extended the statute of limitations for making claims on Nazi-stolen art to six years after its "actual discovery".
Raymond Dowd, a lawyer for the Grunbaum heirs - Timothy Reif, David Fraenkel and Milos Vavra - argued that the lost works were not discovered by his clients until they noticed they were up for sale at the art fair.
After the ruling, Mr Dowd praised the decision for moving "a step closer" to recovering art taken in "the largest mass theft in history".

You may also be interested in:

• The Tattooist of Auschwitz - and his secret love
• 'Lost' film predicting rise of Nazism returns to screen
• Auschwitz inmate's notes from hell finally revealed

The case follows a failed attempt by Milos Vavra and Mr Dowd in 2005 to win restitution for another Schiele drawing from Grunbaum's collection.
The court in that case ruled in favour of Boston businessman who owned the work, on the grounds that too much time had passed since the heirs had made their claim.

Thieves escape with €2.2m gold artwork after 220kph chase

Thieves smashed their way into an art gallery to steal a 2.2 million euro artwork before escaping police by fleeing at 220 kilometres an hour down the wrong side of a highway with their lights out.

The burglary broke through 5cm thick reinforced glass using some kind of battering ram in order to reach the piece, called "Golden Natural Chaos" which is made from 45kg of 18 karat gold.
The entire operation took just four minutes. A neighbour of the gallery in Knokke, Belgium captured the getaway car being loaded up after being awoken by the alarm.
Artist Arne Quinze who took more than 2 years to make the work, told Euronews he was stunned and devastated because he had invested so much - both financially and artistically in its creation.
"When it was finished I remember the team went silent. Not just because they were proud but because of the feeling created by the piece. The piece made us," he said. "It's impossible to make that piece again."
"Now it's a race. Like every piece of art it's impossible to sell so they will melt it down for the gold," he added.
Police were on the scene within around five minutes, according to a spokesman for the artist, but were unable to recover the work despite a long car chase.
The artwork, which was originally made in Belgium as part of a collaboration with precious metals manufacturer Heimerle+Meule has toured the world, passing through China, the US and France before returning to its homeland.

Chinese antiquities stolen in raid on Bath museum

Haul includes precious gold and jade artefacts, which police say may have been stolen to order

UPDATE: This article was amended to include comment from Vernon Rapley

Police have issued an appeal for witnesses after four masked men broke into a museum in south-west England and stole precious jade and gold artefacts as well as many other items.

The raid on the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath took place at around 1.20am on Tuesday 17 April.

Zitan wood covered box with inlays (18th century)Avon and Somerset Constabulary

Witnesses saw the thieves smash a first-floor window to enter the museum. The four men then broke into display cabinets and removed numerous objects, according to a statement on the website of Avon and Somerset Police.

The break-in follows an attempted robbery at the same museum six years ago, when three men tried to steal items during opening hours. On that occasion, nothing was taken and the intruders escaped before police arrived.

This time, the thieves removed objects including a jade monkey holding a peach from the Yuan or early Ming dynasty (13th-15th century); a carving of jade mandarin ducks with lotus flowers from the Qing dynasty (probably 18th century); a set of 14 gold belt plaques decorated with flowers from the early Ming dynasty (around 1500 or earlier); a Jizhou stoneware vase with painted floral and insect designs from the Southern Song dynasty (12th-13th century); a soapstone figure of the scholar Dongfang Shuo by the stone carver Yang Yuxuan from the late Ming or early Qing dynasty (1630-1680); and a zitan wood covered box with various inlays from the Qing dynasty (18th century).

The men were then seen fleeing the museum in a dark SUV. Police arrived at the scene five minutes after receiving a phone call from a member of the public. They are now investigating the crime scene, conducting door-to-door enquiries and reviewing local CCTV footage.

A museum employee tells The Art Newspaper that the thieves had taken “many more” objects than those listed as stolen on the police website. Museum staff are now working on compiling a full list of the seized items and will publish this on their website “as soon as possible”, the employee says. The museum will remain closed for the next few weeks and “hopes to reopen by 5 May” for its new exhibition [A Quest for Wellness: Contemporary Art by Zhang Yanzi], she adds.

“Due to the items stolen and the speed of the burglary, we suspect this to be a targeted attack, with the artefacts possibly stolen to order. These items range in monetary value, but their cultural significance is priceless,” Detective Sergeant Matthew Reed said in a statement.

Vernon Rapley, the director of Cultural Heritage Protection & Security at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the chair of the National Museum Security Group, says: “We were all saddened to hear about of the theft from the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath, I know that museums across the UK will do all that they can to assist in recovering the property and hopefully bringing the offenders to justice. It is concerning to witness a crime targeting jade and gold in a museum, after a period of relative quiet within the UK. The NMSG monitors crime patterns across the UK and Europe, and has been keeping a cautious eye on events targeting gold and other precious goods. We very much hope that this crime isn’t the start of a pattern of offending.”

The astonishing £100,000 haul burglars stole from Cheltenham flat - including Faberge eggs and Rolex watch

The list of stolen goods is quite incredible - and the owner is devastated

The hunt is one for two Faberge eggs and a Faberge bowl after they were stolen from a flat in Cheltenham.
David Sartori was devastated to return to his home in Evesham Road and find the eggs had been stolen in a burglary. The thieves also took a whole host of other items and in all the haul was worth more than £100,000.
It included a Faberge 24k gold and royal blue enamel miniature bowl, valued at £30,000.

That was given to David as a gift by his late grandfather, Charles Hayes.
The 39-year-old, who works as a garden designer, is desperate to get all of the items back but the bowl is of particular sentimental value to him.
He said: “I wish I had been here and could have done more. I feel really upset about this.
“My enjoyment is to come home and look at my collection.
“As sad as that sounds, I love it. It’s my thing.
“It’s the fact that one day I walked in and my treasures had gone.”

The full list of items stolen, valued at £100,000+

• Faberge Antique Russian Imperial Silver Letter Opener – £4,310
• Asprey solid silver pill boxes – x3 £1200-1500
• Asprey cuff links - £300.00
• Collection of blue enamel and solid silver pill boxes – x8 in all - total £2/2500
• Solid silver writing pen - £800-1000
• Enamel green and silver Art Deco pill boxes – £500
• Asprey blue enamel miniature carriage clock plus leather case – £6500/7000
• Collection of solid silver pill boxes – x5 in total - £500ish
• A solid silver miniature settee and two French chairs – £1000
• A solid crown & silver horn with red silk tassel - £800
• Gold Fabergé egg. Inside a porcelain rose bud housing gold chain and diamond pendent. - £5000
• A 24k gold and royal blue enamel miniature bowl. Faberge. - £30,000
• Gold Fabergé egg from glass display case in hall way. – £3500/5000
• A pair of Georgian solid silver boxes plus tortoise shell and solid silver box - £600/800
• A mauve porcelain and diamond set pill box. Stamped Asprey - £3000
• A collection of coal port porcelain for a Tiffany and Co exhibition c 1890 – x3 Pieces - £1800/2000
• A collection of enamel and solid silver or gilt miniature picture frames. - x6 pieces. - £3500
• A 24k gold zodiac Pisces Fabergé egg. Royal blue enamel front panel with 24k gold star sign and a aquamarine stone inside egg - £3,000
• Polaroid television/dvd - £350.00
• Watch box housing a Gucci dress watch - £800
• Rolex submarina - £8000
• X2 Armani dress watches - £1000
• X2 Tissot watches - £1500.00
• X1 Diesel watch - £200
• The watch box they were housed in - £500
• X1 large Creed Aventus - £300
• X1 White Company Aspen - £70.00
• X1 large Creed Tweed - £250.00
• X1 Chanel Sport - £70.00
• X1 invictus large - £90.00
• IPad – £600
• Lap Top – £400
• Louis Vuitton duffle bag - £1000
• A pair of Gucci Aviator sunglasses - £350 A pair of Prada sunglasses. - £400 A pair of Gucci sports sun glasses - £300 (All boxes left behind) A Gucci wash bag £400
• Grandfather’s war medals
• 5 gold full sovereigns £1500
• Apple iPod
• A brand new iPhone 7
• A baby blue Nintendo DS plus charger and games in a black material holder - £250
• One 18 ct gold money clip
• A Gucci monogram belt with polished silver buckle stamped Gucci - £300
• A Gucci leather grey snakeskin belt unopened stamped Gucci on buckle -£300
• A pair of black Emporio Armani aviator sunglasses unopened unwrapped - £350
• Two solid silver and tortoise shell writing pens - in a distinctive Buckingham Palace black velvet box - £500
• X3 Lalique glass sculptures £800/1000
• X3 Gucci candles unopened and unwrapped - £300
• A silver Gucci bamboo bracelet - £400
• X2 antique silver pocket watches
• A black Mount Blanc writing pen - £600
• A silver gilt grape stand and grape scissors - £800/£1000
• A miniature solid silver brief case - Tiffany and Co - £300
• A miniature silver vase 2” tall - Tiffany and Co - £300.00
• A Louis Vuitton Passport Wallet - £200
• A collection of miniature solid silver and enamel animals. British hall marks. A pheasant.... three pink pigs, a peacock, a giraffe, a leopard and a large lion - £2500 minimum
• A collection of 14 Herend porcelain animals with a distinctive fishnet pattern some pink, 24k gold, blue, green. Some will have an Aspreys red and gilt sticker on their bases - £2500 minimum
• A Gucci silver chain with two dog tags attached both stamped in tiny letters Gucci - £250
• An antique walnut cuff link box - £200
• A box contains 20 silver 1 Troy ounce bullion bars - silver - £600
• Two solid silver cigarette cases - £500

He added that it had taken him 30 years to build up his collection and he was grateful that about 60 per cent of it had not been stolen during the March 26 burglary. Items that were not taken included seven more Faberge products, including eggs.
David’s eggs are not any of the 50 that are famous across the world and can change hands for millions of pounds. Those were made by Faberge for the Imperial Russian royal family between 1885 and 1916.
But his are, nonetheless, original Faberge eggs and are very valuable and collectable.

The haul stolen from David’s flat, which he has been restoring for about 18 months, included valuable watches, jewellery and antiques. Medals belonging to his grandfather were also stolen.
One egg is gold with a porcelain rosebud housing a gold chain and diamond pendant. The other is a gold Zodiac Pisces egg which has a royal blue enamel front panel, a gold star sign and an aquamarine stone inside.
Other pieces are jewellery and watches from Rolex, Chanel, Tiffany, Asprey and Gucci. A valuable Asprey blue enamel miniature carriage clock and leather case was also stolen.

David began collecting as a child with the help of his grandfather and that is one of the reasons he is so fond of the pieces.
He added: “I want everything back. I don’t want a cheque, I want them back.
“The bowl is completely unique. There’s one in the whole world and that’s it.”

Stolen Art Watch, Caravaggio Nativity Lives, Flamming June 2018

June 1, 2018, 9:38 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Art Hostage Reveals The Turbo Plan To Recover The Gardner Art

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, 2018, May The Force Be With Your Heart

$

0

0

 

Former mobster may hold clue to recovery of stolen Caravaggio

The Nativity was stolen in 1969 and could have been hidden in Switzerland

Hopes of solving one of the worst art crimes in history were reignited last night, after Italian investigators announced they had received new information.
Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence, a Caravaggio masterpiece that was stolen in 1969, could be being hidden in Switzerland after it fell into the hands of organised crime, the head of Italy’s anti-mafia commission said on Thursday.
The new lead on the whereabouts of the 17th-century painting – a depiction of the newborn Christ on a bed of straw, painted in the chiaroscuro technique – came from a former mobster-turned-informant, who revealed to Italian investigators that it had once been held by Gaetano Badalamenti, a Sicilian “boss of bosses” who was known as one of the ringleaders of an infamous heroin trafficking network in the US called the Pizza Operation.
Investigators announced this week that Gaetano Grado, the mafia informant, said Badalamenti had been put in touch with an art dealer in Switzerland after obtaining the work – also known as The Adoration – from another mafia boss. Badalamenti was arrested in 1984 under the leadership of the then US attorney in New York, Rudolph Giuliani, and was accused and convicted of helping to bring $1.65bn in heroin into the US. He died in a Massachusetts hospital in 2004.
The fate of The Nativity has been a subject of speculation for nearly half a century, ever since two criminals stole the painting out of San Lorenzo Oratory in Palermo, where they used razors to cut the painting out of its frame.
Among theories that have captured the imagination of art history buffs is that the painting – which was long believed to have been stolen by elements of the Sicilian mafia – may have been left to rot in a barn and was eaten by rats.
But this week’s news suggested it could yet be recovered.
Rosy Bindi, the head of Italy’s national anti-mafia commission, said new evidence suggested that The Nativity was intact and could be in Switzerland, after being sold to art traffickers there.
“We have collected enough evidence to launch a new investigation and ask the collaboration of foreign authorities, especially to the Swiss ones,” said Bindi. “We hope to find it and bring it back to its home in Palermo.”
The mafia has long been known to have an interest in stealing precious artwork and using it as a form of collateral.
Caravaggio’s masterpiece was thought to have been painted by the old master in Rome and later moved to Sicily.
Leoluca Orlando, the mayor of Palermo, who has helped transform the Sicilian capital from a mafia stronghold to a European capital of culture, said the theft of the painting had dealt a blow to the city at a time – in 1969 – when it was dominated by mobsters and godfathers.
“Today this city has changed and is demanding back everything the mafia took away from it,” he said. “Even getting back a small piece of it would be considered a victory.”

What’s the motive for museum thefts?

 Gold reliquary containing Anne of Brittany's heart. Photo: Guillaume Souvant/AFP/Getty Images

Two recent museum thefts can be taken to illustrate the thinking behind such crimes. One, in Nantes, saw thieves snatch a 16th-century solid gold reliquary containing the preserved heart of a French queen from the Thomas-Dobrée museum. The other, in Bath, involved the theft of Chinese jade and gold from the Museum of East Asian Art.
The Nantes theft was carried out in the night between 13 and 14 April, with the thieves breaking in through a window. Although the loss of the heart of Anne of Brittany, which had only gone back on display on the Tuesday of the preceding week, attracted the majority of attention, the thieves also took a range of gold coins and medals and a gilt sculpture of a Hindu deity – the latter presumably in the mistaken belief that it too was gold. This theft appears to be a prime example of opportunism. The return to display of the reliquary presumably drew the attention of the thieves and they then took the first available opportunity to take it, and other items that appeared valuable to them at the same time. Little planning was presumably carried out if amongst their haul of gold was a gilt sculpture of far lower financial value. The fact that the reliquary was subsequently buried just outside Saint Nazaire (a nearby town), from where it was recovered after police were led to it following two arrests, indicates that it is unlikely that the thieves had thought beyond the initial ‘smash and grab’ element of their crime and had not considered how to dispose of their haul.
In contrast – although superficially similar in that the thieves broke in through a window during the early hours of the morning – the theft from the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath on 17 April appears to have been highly targeted. The pieces taken seem to have been selected based on their quality and cultural significance, rather than simply their material, which ranged from jade to soapstone to zitan wood, or obvious financial value. The thieves made their selection of objects rapidly and fled the scene in under five minutes before the police could arrive, indicating that significant planning must have gone into the robbery. Again in contrast to the Nantes theft, as yet it appears that none of the material stolen has been recovered, nor have any arrests been made.
This is not the first time that a European museum has suffered from what appears to be a targeted theft of Chinese material. Similar thefts have taken place over the last decade in Durham, at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge, and at the Château de Fontainebleau. This kind of crime appears to be carried out with a specific view to then selling the pieces stolen to the Chinese market where it is relatively easy to find a buyer, and the chances of a piece being identified are far lower than if it were offered to the Western art market.
Sadly, museums are particularly vulnerable to targeted thefts such as this. Their very nature, with publicly listed catalogues of their collections (the full collection of the Museum of East Asian Art is available online), and outreach programs to ensure that people are aware of their existence and holdings, means that for those who are seeking particular types of item and are prepared to secure them through illicit means they are almost a shop window for criminals. It is essential that museums resist the temptation to keep their collections private, but their public nature does mean that it is also essential to factor in security when planning exhibitions, building works, and storage.
Equally, museums remain vulnerable to opportunistic theft of pieces on display such as appears to have been the case in Nantes. It is rare, but criminals see the pieces within museums as valuable, and thus worth stealing if an opportunity to do so arises. As in this case though, they rarely have a plan for how to turn that value into cash, and thus end up hiding the items when it becomes clear that they are not as easy to fence as they might have hoped.
Ultimately, for the general public, historians, and museums themselves, the outcomes of these thefts are often sadly indistinguishable: the loss of items integral to their collections. Tackling museum theft is dependent upon financial resources for security and policing, but for museums, especially those with lower budgets, an increased awareness of the types of items likely to be liable to targeted theft, and of the risks of opportunistic theft prompted by publicity, is well worth keeping in mind.

Want your stolen portrait back? Bring us £100,000 cash: What gangsters told Francis Bacon after taking his famous likeness, painted by Lucian Freud, from Berlin art gallery 30 years ago

• The masterpiece Portrait Of Francis Bacon disappeared 30 years ago from Berlin
• Mail on Sunday can reveal that Bacon received a ransom demand a year later
• Barry Joule, Bacon's close friend and neighbour in London's South Kensington, has now revealed that the artist received a phone call in his studio from 'a tough-sounding East End man, probably an associate of the Krays' 

By Dalya Alberge For The Mail On Sunday

It is one of the art world's great unsolved mysteries – the daring theft of Lucian Freud's portrait of fellow artist Francis Bacon.

The masterpiece, Portrait Of Francis Bacon, disappeared without trace after it was removed from its wire frame and spirited out of Berlin's National Gallery 30 years ago.

But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Bacon received a ransom demand a year later in 1989 and was apparently poised to recover the work – only for the operation to be wrecked by a police blunder.

+3

Portrait Of Francis Bacon was spirited out of Berlin's National Gallery 30 years ago. Pictured: Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud

Barry Joule, Bacon's close friend and neighbour in London's South Kensington, has now revealed that the artist received a phone call in his studio from 'a tough-sounding East End man, probably an associate of the Krays'.

During the 1960s, Bacon fraternised with gangsters, among them Ronnie Kray.

Joule recalls: '[The gangster] told him, 'If you want to get yer face picture back, get £100K together and wait by the phone for a call at noon exactly.''

Francis called Joule who drove his black Porsche to pick up Bacon from his studio and take him to his flat. Even though he didn't own the painting, Bacon then panicked and stuffed £140,000 into a satchel, reappearing 'sweating and nervous'.

They argued over whether to contact police but Bacon was 'dead set against doing that' because he still felt aggrieved by a 1968 drugs bust involving his then lover, George Dyer.

+3

People look towards the wild west-style wanted poster showing the reward for the return of the portrait of the late British artist Francis Bacon in downtown Berlin June in 2001

Instead he alerted the head of security at the Tate gallery, which had bought the picture in 1952 from Freud and had loaned it to the German museum in 1988 when it was stolen.

Then they went back to the studio to await the noon call, but it never came. Leaving the studio several hours later the two men spotted 'three undercover policemen' in a Ford Fiesta. Joule said they all had their 'heads buried in newspapers'.

Convinced the gangsters must also have spotted them, Bacon shouted angrily at the officers.

For weeks afterwards, Bacon 'remained paranoid that the Krays and associates would be 'out to get me for grassing to the police',' said Joule, who added: 'If it wasn't for policemen sitting in their car right outside the building, Francis might have got the stolen painting back.' In a recorded interview with Joule three months after the ransom blunder, Bacon spoke of 'how much the police have gone down in my estimation'.

+3

Bacon (pictured) 'remained paranoid that the Krays and associates would be 'out to get me for grassing to the police'

The 7in x 5in oil on copper was one of the few Freud paintings Bacon really liked, so much so he kept a photograph of it in his kitchen.

Freud later plastered Berlin with 'Wanted' posters of the image, offering a £100,000 reward for its recovery so he could include it in a retrospective of his work.

Although the Tate has never claimed the insurance money, because it has hoped to be reunited with the painting, Bacon, who died in 1992, was more pessimistic. 'Most likely it was burnt,' he says on the recording.

The Tate continues to list the painting in its catalogue, simply noting 'not on display'.

In 2004, Joule gave the Tate 1,200 Bacon sketches. They were then valued at about £20million.

He kept about 120 sketches, and he is lending some to an exhibition in Italy, at the Foundation Sorrento museum, in Sorrento, which opens today and runs until October 21.

Full extent of burglary at Bath’s Museum of East Asian Art revealed

With the value of Chinese antiquities on the rise, police suspect the items removed were stolen to order

Some of the objects stolen from the Bath Museum of East Asian ArtAvon and Somerset Police

A complete list of the 48 objects stolen from Bath’s Museum of East Asian Art has now been released, following a burglary on 17 April. These details reveal just how serious the loss has been. The stolen items include 22 jades, 10 ceramics and a Tang (618-907AD) marriage mirror. Three other objects were damaged, but not taken.

The burglary occurred at 1.20am, when four masked men broke into the museum, which is in a restored Georgian townhouse in Bath, in south-west England. They entered through a first-floor window, smashing seven display cases.

A police spokesman commented that “due to the items stolen and the speed of the burglary we suspect this to be a targeted attack with the artefacts possibly stolen to order”. The financial value of Chinese antiquities has risen greatly in recent few years due to growing demand in China. The stolen Bath objects could already have been smuggled out to the Far East.

Immediately after the Bath theft, details of six major items were released: a set of 14 gold belt plaques, a jade monkey, a jade sculpture of mandarin ducks, an inlaid wooden box, a soapstone figure of the scholar Dongfang Shuo and a Jizhou stoneware vase. Information on the other 42 pieces has now been released.

In 2012, the Museum of East Asian Art was targeted by three thieves while the building was open to visitors. An alarm sounded and the men fled.

The latest theft has been particularly distressing for Brian McElney, a retired lawyer from Hong Kong who moved near Bath and set up the museum in 1993. With 2,000 items, it is the UK’s only museum dedicated to East and South-East Asian art.

Although the museum reopened on 5 May, the first floor remains closed. A fundraising appeal has been launched to help with the costs of replacing the damaged cases and reopening the display.

Police seek man in connection with Masterpiece fair jewellery theft

The Metropolitan Police are trying to trace the whereabouts of a man wanted in connection with a high-value theft of jewellery at last year’s ‘Masterpiece London’ fair.

Police have released this image of a man they are trying to trace in connection the theft of three pieces of jewellery at last year’s ‘Masterpiece London’ fair.

They have released an image of the man they believe to be Vinko Osmakcic, a Croatian national thought to be responsible for a number of high-value diamond thefts throughout Europe.
At the 2017 Masterpiece fair at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, three rings were stolen with a combined value of over £2m from the stand of Switzerland-based jewellery dealer Boghossian.

The ‘Masterpiece London’ fair takes place annually in Chelsea.

Det Sgt Chris Taylor from Kensington and Chelsea CID, who is leading the investigation, said: “This was a well-planned and audacious theft committed in the middle of a busy art fair.
"We are re-releasing the image of Mr Osmakcic in an attempt to trace him. It is highly likely that Mr Osmakcic may be out of the UK, possibly in Europe. He may also be known by the following names: Vinko Tomic or Juro Markelic.”
The items taken were a cushion-shaped diamond ring, a vivid yellow cushion-shaped diamond ring encased in smaller oval and round-shaped diamonds, an emerald-cut diamond ring with purple and pink stones, and four pear-shaped diamonds. All three rings have diamond-encrusted bands.

Stolen Art Watch, Art Hostage Reveals The Turbo Plan To Recover The Gardner Art

June 28, 2018, 5:13 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Sign The Turbo Plan Change.org Petition To Bring Home The Gardner Art

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Caravaggio Nativity Lives, Flamming June 2018

$

0

0

https://audioboom.com/posts/6911473-the-turbo-plan

 https://audioboom.com/channel/empty-frames

Stolen Art Watch, Sign The Turbo Plan Change.org Petition To Bring Home The Gardner Art

July 8, 2018, 5:31 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Swedish Crown Jewels Stolen, Art Crime Heatwave August 2018

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Art Hostage Reveals The Turbo Plan To Recover The Gardner Art

$

0

0

---

Stolen Art Watch, Swedish Crown Jewels Stolen, Art Crime Heatwave August 2018

August 1, 2018, 4:26 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Fall Into Art Crime, September 2018

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Sign The Turbo Plan Change.org Petition To Bring Home The Gardner Art

$

0

0

Thieves escape by motorboat after royal jewels heist in Sweden

Two crowns and an orb dating back to the early 1600s stolen from church in Strängnäs, west of Stockholm
Jewel thieves are on the run from police in Sweden after they stole some of the country’s royal jewels from a cathedral before fleeing in a motorboat.
The daring theft occurred at about noon on Tuesday in Strängnäs, west of Stockholm, while the cathedral was open to visitors, and a lunch fair was being held nearby.
The robbers then made their getaway in a motorboat that was waiting just a couple of hundred metres away on Lake Mälaren, Sweden’s third biggest lake, police said.
The local news channel Aftonbladet reported the thieves stole two crowns and an orb, adorned with gold, precious stones and pearls that come from the funeral regalia of Charles IX and Kristina the Elder, dating back to the early 1600s.
Witness Tom Rowell, who is getting married in the cathedral next week, told Aftonbladet he saw two men run from the building, jump into a small white motorboat and speed away.
“We contacted the police and told them and they told us that something had been taken from the cathedral,” he said. “I knew immediately they were burglars because of the way they were behaving.”
“It’s despicable that people would steal from a holy building and a historical building,” said Rowell.
It is believed the thieves fled via the vast system of lakes west of Stockholm. Police have mobilised a huge search operation with a helicopter and boats to find the men and recover the items but have so far been unsuccessful.
“It’s 1-0 to them right now,” Thomas Agnevik, a police spokesman, told Aftonbladet. “We want to spread information and pictures of these items so that they can be identified as stolen objects.”
King Karl IX died in 1611 and his wife Queen Kristina in 1625. The items are priceless and police said that the objects would be very hard to sell on the open market.
“What usually happens with this type of object is that they are recovered sooner or later, because there are very few people who are prepared to handle such items,” Agnevik said. “We have high hopes of getting them back.”
Police and cathedral officials said they did not know the value of the objects that were stolen. “It’s too difficult to translate these things into some kind of value. It’s such a unique object,” said Agnevik.
Catharina Fröjd, who works at Strängnäs cathedral, called the theft “an enormous loss in cultural value and economic value”.
Maria Ellior of the Swedish police’s National Operations Department told Sweden’s TT news agency the items would be “impossible to sell”.

Police release CCTV of suspects in £1m burglary case

Thieves climbed a two-metre high wall to steal antiques from the country home of a multi-millionaire entrepreneur.

The four suspects, who were captured on CCTV, raided the home of Prof Sir Christopher Evans in Bibury, Gloucestershire, on 9 July and took diamond rings, tiaras and bracelets.
The theft had a "devastating" effect on his wife Lady Anne, due to the sentimental nature of the items.
A "substantial cash reward" has been offered for information.
The CCTV footage captured the gang carrying items in a log basket across the grounds before putting them in a silver or grey Audi S5 and heading towards Cirencester.
Antique items taken include diamond rings, gold brooches, a tiara, a Cartier bracelet, a choker, silver candlesticks and three Art Nouveau silver rose bowls.
It is estimated the items stolen in the burglary - which happened between 17:00 and 20:00 on Monday 9 July - have a value of at least £1m.
In a statement, Sir Christopher, an internationally renowned life sciences entrepreneur originally from Port Talbot, said: "The real pain comes from what these stolen items mean and symbolise in our lives.
"Anne's engagement ring was her late father's signet ring - the only thing she has left of him. The diamond ring I bought my wife when our first child was born cost almost our entire savings at that point."
He added the couple had "always taken security around the property very seriously and we have obviously stepped up security with 24-hour dog patrols around the property".
Det Con Faye Satchwell-Bennett, from Gloucestershire Constabulary, said the burglary has had a "marked impact" on the victims, and asked that antiques dealers be on the lookout for any of the items.

Stolen Art Watch, Fall Into Art Crime, September 2018

September 1, 2018, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Reward Price List Will Lead to Gardner Art Recovery

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Swedish Crown Jewels Stolen, Art Crime Heatwave August 2018

$

0

0

The Great Chinese Art Heist

By

Alex W. Palmer

Strange how it keeps happening, how the greatest works of Chinese art keep getting brazenly stolen from museums around the world. Is it a conspiracy? Vengeance for treasures plundered years ago? We sent Alex W. Palmer to investigate the trail of theft and the stunning rumor: Is the Chinese government behind one of the boldest art-crime waves in history?

The patterns of the heists were evident only later, but their audacity was clear from the start. The spree began in Stockholm in 2010, with cars burning in the streets on a foggy summer evening. The fires had been lit as a distraction, a ploy to lure the attention of the police. As the vehicles blazed, a band of thieves raced toward the Swedish royal residence and smashed their way into the Chinese Pavilion on the grounds of Drottningholm Palace. There they grabbed what they wanted from the permanent state collection of art and antiquities. Police told the press the thieves had fled by moped to a nearby lake, ditched their bikes into the water, and escaped by speedboat. The heist took less than six minutes.

A month later, in Bergen, Norway, intruders descended from a glass ceiling and plucked 56 objects from the China Collection at the KODE Museum. Next, robbers in England hit the Oriental Museum at Durham University, followed by a museum at Cambridge University. Then, in 2013, the KODE was visited once more; crooks snatched 22 additional relics that had been missed during the first break-in.

Had they known exactly what was happening, perhaps the security officials at the Château de Fontainebleau, the sprawling former royal estate just outside Paris, could have predicted that they might be next.

With more than 1,500 rooms, the palace is a maze of opulence. But when bandits arrived before dawn on March 1, 2015, their target was unmistakable: the palace's grand Chinese Museum. Created by the last empress of France, the wife of Napoleon III, the gallery was stocked with works so rare that their value was considered incalculable.

In recent years, however, the provenance of those treasures had become an increasingly sensitive subject: The bulk of the museum's collection had been pilfered from China by French soldiers in 1860 during the sack of Beijing's Old Summer Palace.

In the low light before daybreak, the robbers raced to the southwest wing and shattered a window. They climbed inside, stepping over broken glass, and swiftly went to work dismantling the empress's trove. Within seven minutes, they were gone, along with 22 of the museum's most valuable items: porcelain vases; a mandala made of coral, gold, and turquoise; a Chimera in cloisonné enamel; and more.

The police arrived quickly, but there was little to be done. Before vanishing, the criminals had emptied a fire extinguisher, spraying its snowy foam perhaps in the hopes that it would erase their fingerprints, hide their footprints, and remove any lingering clue as to who they were. “The thieves knew what they were doing and exactly what they wanted,” the museum's president, Jean-François Hebert, told the press. They were “probably very professional.” The theft, he added, was a “terrible shock.” But maybe it shouldn't have been.

In the years since the Fontainebleau heist, the robberies have continued throughout Europe—sometimes in daring, cinematic fashion. The full scale of the criminality is impossible to pinpoint, because many heists never make the headlines. Security officials and museum boards are sometimes reluctant to publicize their own failures, both to avoid embarrassment and to save on the cost of security upgrades.

But the thefts that were made public bear striking similarities. The criminals are careful and professional. They often seem to be working from a shopping list—and appear content to leave behind high-value objects that aren't on it.

In each case, the robbers focused their efforts on art and antiquities from China, especially items that had been looted by foreign armies. Many of these objects are well documented and publicly known, making them very hard to sell and difficult to display. In most cases the pieces have not been recovered; they seem to simply vanish.

After that first robbery, in Stockholm, a police official told the press that “all experience says this is an ordered job.” As the heists mounted, so did the suspicion that they were being carried out on instructions from abroad. But if that was true, an obvious question loomed: Who was doing the ordering?

---

For much of the 20th century, China's leaders hardly seemed to care about the country's lost and plundered antiquities. Art was a symbol of bourgeois decadence, fit for destruction rather than preservation. By the early 2000s, however, China was growing rich and confident, and decidedly less Communist. The fate of the country's plundered art was seized upon as a focus of national concern and pride.

Suddenly a new cadre of plutocrats—members of the country's growing club of billionaires—began purchasing artifacts at a dizzying pace. For this new breed of mega-rich collector, buying up Chinese art represented a chance to flash not just incredible wealth but also exorbitant patriotism.

But less conspicuous campaigns to lure art back to China were initiated, too. One of the country's most powerful corporate conglomerates, the state-run China Poly Group, launched a shadowy program aimed at locating and recovering lost art. Poly—an industrial giant that sells everything from gemstones to missiles—was run by a Communist Party titan who staffed the project with officials connected to Chinese military intelligence.

The government, meanwhile, was sanctioning its own efforts via a web of overlapping state agencies and Communist Party–affiliated NGOs. In 2009, a year before the Stockholm heist, the efforts got more serious. Beijing announced that it planned to dispatch a “treasure hunting team” to various institutions across the U.S. and Europe. Museums were left clueless about the purpose of the mission. Were the Chinese coming to assess collections, to conduct research, or to reclaim objects on the spot? More importantly, who, exactly, were the visitors gathering information for?

When an eight-person team arrived at New York's Metropolitan Museum, it was led by an archaeologist and largely composed of employees from Chinese state media and Beijing's palace museum. As the group poked around and asked about the art on display, one participant, a researcher named Liu Yang who had gained some notoriety for his zeal in cataloging China's lost treasures, sleuthed through the museum's long corridors, looking for objects he might recognize. The visit ended without incident, but the shift in tactics was evident: China was no longer content to sit back passively and hope for the return of its art. The hunt was on.

Soon, all across Europe, thefts began.

---

Those looking for China's lost art have plenty of targets. According to one widely cited government estimate, more than 10 million antiquities have disappeared from China since 1840. The works that mean the most to the Chinese are the ones that left during the so-called Century of Humiliation, from 1840 to 1949, when China was repeatedly carved up by foreign powers. The modern Communist Party has declared its intent to bring China back from that period of prolonged decline, and the return of looted objects serves as undeniable proof—tangible, visible, and beautiful proof—of the country's revival.

By far the most important pieces are those that were hauled away by British and French troops in 1860 after the sacking of the Old Summer Palace. In China today, it's difficult to overstate the indignity still associated with the looting of the palace, which had served as a residence to the last Chinese dynasty. Its gardens, art, and architecture were said to be among the most beautiful in the world. The palace held an array of wonders, not the least of which was a fountain adorned with 12 bronze heads representing the animals of the Chinese zodiac.

“The government in China doesn't think they're stolen objects. They think they belong to them."

When European troops reached the garden, the desecration of the palace became a mad frenzy. Soldiers stripped it of everything they could carry. The zodiac heads were wrenched from their bases and hauled away as trophies. When the soldiers had removed all they could, they torched what remained—retribution, they said, for the torture and murder of British envoys who'd attempted to negotiate with the Chinese. The grounds of the palace were so large and so intricate that the 4,500 troops needed three days to burn everything.

Most of the plunder was taken back to Europe and either tucked away in private collections or presented as gifts to royal families. Queen Victoria of Britain was given a pet Pekingese dog, the first of its kind ever seen in Europe. Unabashed by its provenance, she named it Looty.

In China, the memory of the Old Summer Palace's destruction remains vivid—and intentionally so. The site has been kept as ruins, the better to “stir feelings of national humiliation and patriotism,” as one Chinese academic put it. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before those feelings transformed into action.

---

Of course, not all of the art that's finding its way home to China is being snatched off museum walls in the dead of night or wrangled back by aggressive bureaucrats. The country's new elite are helping, too.

“The Chinese don't need a coordinating campaign,” says James Ratcliffe, the director of recoveries and general counsel at the Art Loss Register. “There are enough Chinese collectors with a huge amount of money who want the pride of acquiring this art.”

In 2016, for the first time, China had more billionaires than the United States. Many of the country's nouveau riche have taken to art collecting with a giddy enthusiasm. In 2000, China represented 1 percent of the global-art-auction market; by 2014, it accounted for 27 percent. The market for historical Chinese art is so frenzied that even seemingly mundane pieces of Chinese art can electrify the scene at auction houses.

In 2010, a 16-inch Chinese vase went up for sale at an auction house in an unremarkable suburb of London. The starting price was $800,000. Half an hour later, the final bid—reportedly from an anonymous buyer from mainland China—was $69.5 million. Though the provenance of this vase was mysterious, similar objects with traceable histories of looting have proved valuable. “Buying looted artwork has become high-street fashion among China's elite,” Zhao Xu, the director of Beijing Poly Auction, told China Daily.

Their desires adhere to a nationalistic logic: The closer an object's connection to China's ignominious defeats, the more significant its return. In recent years, vases, bronzeware, and a host of other items from the Old Summer Palace have all sold for millions. Behind these purchases is almost always a well-connected Chinese billionaire eager to demonstrate China's modern resurgence on the world stage.

In 2014, a taxi driver turned billionaire named Liu Yiqian paid $36 million for a small porcelain “chicken cup,” coveted because it was once a part of the imperial collection. (According to the Wall Street Journal, he completed his purchase by swiping his Amex card 24 times and promptly stoked controversy by drinking from the dish.) A few months later, he paid an additional $45 million for a Tibetan silk tapestry from the Ming era. “When we are young, we are indoctrinated to believe that the foreigners stole from us,” Liu once told The New Yorker.“But maybe it's out of context. Whatever of ours [the foreigners] stole, we can always snatch it back one day.” (Liu Yiqian did not respond to requests for comment.)

Huang Nubo has a similarly patriotic interest in China's art. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a ruddy complexion and close-set eyes, he's the kind of billionaire who makes other billionaires jealous: He's an accomplished adventurer, one of the few people alive to have visited both the North and South Poles and summited the world's seven tallest peaks (he's topped Everest three times). When I met him at his office in Beijing, he had just returned from an expedition in western China, where he'd reached the top of the world's sixth-tallest mountain.

Huang made his money by building one of the country's most powerful real estate conglomerates, a task he undertook after spending ten years as an official in the publicity department of the Communist Party. His passion for Chinese culture has helped make him famous, and through an effort called the National Treasures Coming Home campaign, he's focusing on the reclamation of lost relics.

After the second break-in at the KODE, Huang contacted the museum. He wanted to fly to Bergen and tour the closed China exhibit. Once there, he was shown a collection of marble columns taken from the Old Summer Palace. Huang began to weep and told the museum director that the columns had no business being displayed in Norway. He donated $1.6 million to KODE, which he says was to upgrade its security. (A spokesman for KODE said the agreement did not concern security.) Soon thereafter the museum shipped seven of the marble columns back to China to be displayed at Peking University on permanent loan. (Huang denies any connection between his donation and the return of the columns.) The looting of the columns and their open display in a European museum “were our disgrace,” he told China Daily, and their return represented “dignity returned to the Chinese people.”

In addition to visiting the KODE, Huang had toured the Château de Fontainebleau, not long before it was robbed. I asked him what he had heard about the theft and the rumor that the stolen relics had made their way back to China. He tightened his face into a small smile and laughed. “I only heard about it,” he said. “[That they might go back to China] is a good suggestion, in terms of result, but it encourages more stealing. I think it's because Chinese relics have good prices on the market nowadays.”

---

In the face of China's repatriation campaign—and the recent robberies—museums are now scrambling. Some have stood their ground, arguing the legitimacy of their acquisitions or touting the value to the Chinese of sharing their culture abroad. Others have quietly shipped crates of art back to China, in hopes of avoiding trouble with either the thieves or the government.

In 2013, for instance, two of the famed zodiac heads, the rabbit and the rat, from the estate of the French designer Yves Saint Laurent, were handed over after a planned auction was scuttled. Officials in China told Christie's, the auction house, that if the heads were ever sold off, there would be “serious effects” on the firm's business. (Not long after the heads were returned, Christie's became the first international fine-art auction house to receive a license to operate independently in China.)

Many institutions, though, have begun beefing up security. Certainly no museum has been more bedeviled by all of this than the KODE Museum in Bergen, Norway, on the country's rugged southwestern coast. The twice-robbed KODE may not be a household name, but it's apparently well-known to the people stealing China's lost antiquities.

Located on Bergen's picturesque central square, the museum is just three blocks from the local police headquarters. After it was robbed for a second time, in January 2013, Roald Eliassen was eventually hired as director of security. Eliassen is a former cop. He's brawny and compact, with a windburned face and messy gray hair. “I read about the thefts in the newspaper,” he told me. “I thought, ‘How could this happen?’ Once, okay. Twice…well, that's not good.”

During the KODE's first robbery, in 2010, police say the alarms never even sounded. The intruders rappelled through a glass ceiling and grabbed dozens of pieces: imperial seals, elegant vases, and more.

Three years later, the scheme was even more sophisticated. Just after 5 A.M. on a Saturday, criminals set fire to two cars far from the museum. Once the police had dispatched units to respond, two robbers entered offices adjoining the KODE and smashed through a glass wall into the museum's China exhibit. Cops sped to the scene, but the burglars were in and out in two minutes. “They were very exact,” a police official told me. They took 22 items, ignoring more valuable pieces in favor of grabbing specific ones: delicate statues, intricate vases, imperial seals.

The police managed to arrest six men but determined they were merely foot soldiers, unwilling or unable to share useful information about who had hired them. “The thieves didn't think of this themselves,” the police official said. Eliassen offered a simple explanation of what happened: “We had objects that somebody wanted, and he hired someone to take them.”

When I visited Bergen, the China exhibit was closed to the public for renovations after a security upgrade, which included the installation of an imposing series of sliding gates and metal doors. A guard stood watch nearby. Inside the gallery, the space was mostly empty. Anything light enough to be carried had been moved into storage, and the heavy items—white marble statues and pillars and big-bellied Buddhas—were covered in clear tarp.

At the KODE, there was a silver lining to that second heist. Amid all the unwanted attention, authorities got a lucky tip about a piece taken in the first break-in. They were told it had made its way back to China and was now on display at a Shanghai airport. But even this possibility came with its own frustrations: Bergen police lacked the power to follow up, and Norwegian officials, wary of upsetting a delicate relationship with China, did nothing. “If we say an item is in China, they say, ‘Prove it,’ ” said Kenneth Didriksen, the head of Norway's art-crime unit. So, he told me, they stood down. “We don't want to insult anyone.”

Eliassen believed that the best thing for the museum to do was to protect the art that remained. The pieces were probably never coming back. “The government in China doesn't think they're stolen objects,” he said. “They think they belong to them. They won't take it seriously, won't follow the trail. That's the biggest problem.”

Even art-crime experts, though, are quick to acknowledge that the situation might look different from China's perspective. Noah Charney, a professor of art history and founder of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art, says that when it comes to winning back their lost art, the Chinese can't imagine how such a thing would be wrong. “It's almost like there's a fog around it from a criminological perspective,” he said. “It's like another planet, in terms of the way people think about what art is, what authenticity is, what is socially unacceptable to do.”

---

On a gray day in Beijing, I visited the grounds of the Old Summer Palace. Today the site is a popular destination for tourists and school field trips. It has not been rebuilt; the point of the park is its state of destruction.

I'd come to meet with Liu Yang, who'd been a member of the treasure-hunting delegation to the Met in New York City. In his office, Liu keeps a lone photo on the wall—an aerial shot of the park. In it, the site looks like a bombed-out war zone, with barren patches where statues and monuments once stood. “It was a Chinese fairy tale,” he told me, “and it was destroyed by foreign armies.”

Liu is mild-mannered and scrupulously polite. For 20 years he's been a player in China's battle to get its art back, but even today he feels his work is just beginning. He showed me a book he'd published, a comprehensive inventory of the palace's lost treasures. The pages were filled with sticky notes and handwritten notations, and as he flipped through, he pointed out photos of items held by some of the world's best-known museums.

Of course, he'd been to many of them, sometimes under odd circumstances. “My most troublesome experience was at the Metropolitan Museum in New York,” Liu said. “Everyone was very nervous. They called a Chinese lawyer and gave me the phone so she could tell me that the museum had no items from the Old Summer Palace and that all their items were held via legal means.” (A spokesman for the Met denied that any such call took place.)

“We will never give up, we will never stop—no matter the effort. We need [the Chinese] people to see that everything that belonged to us is coming back.”

Liu says curators in the UK were less defensive. “When I told them these objects were taken, they barely reacted,” Liu said. “They just showed me their records of which generals took what. They're very direct about it. They don't hide it.”

Still, he's not surprised when a museum clamps down once he begins sniffing around. After a visit to the Wallace Collection, in central London, he says, he noticed the museum's website no longer listed the objects he'd asked about. (A spokesman for the Wallace Collection said those objects were temporarily removed to be prepared for an exhibition and are now on display.)

It didn't much matter; Liu had a good idea of what was housed there. He knows the collections of foreign museums inside and out, and museum officials know him, too, even if they don't have much enthusiasm for his research. A few years ago, he had visited the Château de Fontainebleau, and his book had been published right before the sensational robbery there. After the crime, he got a panicked phone call. “I was the first person to learn the news about the robbery there, about 30 minutes after it happened,” he told me. “The museum staff contacted me in very broken Chinese. They said, ‘These items were stolen right after your book was published, and your book was the first catalog of the Old Summer Palace. Do you see a connection?’ ” He says he politely suggested that they maybe tell other museums to improve their security. (Officials at the Château de Fontainebleau did not respond to requests for comment.)

Liu seems ambivalent toward the plight of burgled museums, especially a place like the Fontainebleau, which he says holds more looted Chinese art than any other institution on earth and advertises the collection's origins as plunder from the sacking of the Old Summer Palace. “Displaying these objects in European museums is like a theft itself—they're just showing it off without concern,” Liu said. “I know that we won't get everything back in my lifetime,” he continued. “We will never give up, we will never stop—no matter the effort. We need [the Chinese] people to see that everything that belonged to us is coming back.”

The biggest prize of all, and the most elusive, is the set of zodiac heads from the fountain at the Old Summer Palace, five of which remain missing. “For 100 years we've been looking,” Liu said. Despite his persistence, it's likely that if the 12 zodiac heads are someday re-united and the glorious fountain is re-established, it would not be through the work of a researcher like him, or even thanks to the big spending of a patriotic billionaire like Huang Nubo. Instead, it would be due to the efforts of one of China's richest, most powerful, and most impenetrable entities, a corporation that's been in on the hunt since the very beginning: China Poly.

---

Even among China's elite class of state-controlled behemoths, the China Poly Group is unique for its power and its varied pursuits. According to Fortune, last year it had declared assets of $95.7 billion, almost twice the GDP of Croatia. Its art-repatriation campaign—begun by its former president, the military-intelligence chief He Ping—is now run by an offshoot firm called Poly Culture, which manages the company's burgeoning antiquities collection. In 2000, the same year as Poly Culture's founding, Poly managed to buy back three of the Old Summer Palace's zodiac heads. It's since added a fourth, while a fifth and sixth are housed at China's National Museum and a seventh is kept at the Capital Museum.

“The heads represent our feelings for the entire nation; we love them and we weep for them,” said Jiang Yingchun, the CEO of Poly Culture. We were sitting at a large conference table high up in the company's Beijing headquarters, with a view of the smog-drenched skyline. Jiang was reclining in a black leather chair and smoking an e-cigarette. In the corner of the room, an air filter hummed quietly.

“We can try many ways to get the heads back,” he told me without much elaboration. “The auction is just one method.” It was not the technique that mattered, he seemed to be saying, but the result: The heads must return. “We can't ignore that the art was taken illegally,” even if it was being well cared for, he said. “If you kidnapped my children and then treated them well, the crime is still not forgiven.”

Poly has long worked hand in hand with the Chinese state and the Communist Party. For decades the company operated as the commercial arm of the People's Liberation Army, peddling weapons around the world while also buying and selling art—and running a global information network to locate lost antiquities. That operation was reportedly once described by the company as a long-term “retrieve action” to reclaim treasures “robbed away from China by western powers.” (Officials for the company didn't respond to written requests to elaborate on this program or to questions about the recent spate of art crimes.)

His e-cigarette depleted, Jiang excused himself for another meeting and handed me off to a curator from the Poly Museum. She proudly offered to show me the recovered zodiac heads. At the entrance to the museum, I noticed a wooden plaque. Many items in the collection, it announced, had been “recovered from overseas and saved from being lost to the nation.”

The curator guided me toward a dark, carpeted room in the rear of the museum. Inside, each of the four revered heads—the ox, the tiger, the monkey, and the pig—had been given its own display case, in which it sat atop purple velvet cushioning.

“The first time I saw them, I was so excited,” the curator told me. She spoke in a low, reverential whisper. She was a student then and remembered how, on the day the heads were officially returned, her entire school had watched the ceremony on television. Students wept at their desks.

I asked if she thought the rest would ever be returned. There had been nothing but fakes and false leads for years, and the best guess seemed to be that the remaining five were hidden away in private collections somewhere in Europe. She paused and walked forward to admire the growling bronze tiger head. “Their return is the deepest hope of the Chinese people,” she said. “It's a very sad and hard history for us. When the heads come back, we will finally feel the power of our country.”

'SCUMBAG'

Vile conman who preyed on vulnerable victims in £400k scam stole man’s priceless World War One family medal collection

Daniel Clelland admitted scamming people out of items worth around £400,000 – after protesting his innocence for three years

A MAN who had three of his great uncle’s World War One medals stolen by an antiques dealer conman described him as a “scumbag” who preyed on vulnerable victims.

Daniel Clelland, 44, admitted six offences of fraud by false representation at Chelmsford Crown Court on Tuesday.

The court heard he opened an antique shop called the Dolls House, in Harwich, and another called Scrooge, in Manningtree.
He earned his victims’ trust by initially selling items and paying them - but then the money stopped coming.
In total, Clelland admitted scamming people out of items worth around £400,000 – after protesting his innocence for three years.
Among them was a stamp collection and other goods belonging to one customer said to be worth £300,000.
Another fraud related to using £31,530 cash belonging to 64-year-old Richard Browning-Smith.

Mr Browning-Smith, from Manningtree, told the Sun Online: “Mr Clelland had opened two antique shops, one in Harwick and another in Manningtree. In the window he said he would do valuations on gold, silver and family heirlooms.
“So I asked him to do that but the items never came back, as he stole them.
“My great uncle [Geoffrey Wear] served in World War One and there were two medals stolen with his name, along with Essex Yeomanry, engraved on them.
“He was also awarded the Russian medal which was given to any Commonwealth active member of the Armed services who showed particular deeds of valour. That was also stolen.
“Also taken was his 9 Carat gold vesta case, a vital item for soldiers in trench warfare as this kept their matches dry as they needed to smoke to help with nerves, especially if going over the top.
"All the medals have Geoffrey Wear on them and I'm still hopefully I will get them back somehow. He’s stolen my heritage.”
The 64-year-old, a retired insurance agent, added: “Recently I was with the Royal British Legion in Belgium at the Menin Gate Ypres to commemorate 100 years since the end of WW1. I could have worn these medals to honour his name as I am my great uncle’s nearest surviving relative.”

Mr Browning-Smith said Clelland preyed on vulnerable victims.
He said: “I asked him to do the valuations for insurance purposes at the end of November 2015. I was in a very vulnerable position as my father had died in January 2015…I didn’t feel good at the time.
“It’s been a very stressful time, it doesn’t help my bipolar, what he did has affected me. Mr Clelland preyed on vulnerable people. He’s scum. When he gets sentenced, I hope he gets 20 years in prison. For three years he was saying he was not guilty. I will go to see him get sentenced.”
Mr Browning Smith said Clelland stole around 20 to 30 items from him, including his father’s coin collection which was made up of around 500 to 1,000 coins.
Another victim was 79-year-old Eileen Tyrer, from Dovercourt.
She said: "My husband gave him a Penny Black worth £700 as well as silver coins.
"There was a tin box I wish I have never given him. There was quite a bit of stuff worth £3,000. It was a horrible time.

"But the police have been absolutely wonderful and I can't thank them enough."
Judge David Turner QC adjourned sentence until September 28 and told Clelland: “The overwhelming likelihood is there will be a prison sentence.”
He said Clelland would get credit for his pleas at the “59th minute” because it avoided a number of “quite vulnerable people from a true ordeal”.

How An FBI Sting Operation Helped NC Recover Its Copy Of The Bill Of Rights

In an effort to tell more stories from throughout North Carolina, WFAE has launched a new collaboration with Our State magazine. In this report, Our State's Jeremy Markovich has the story of  a priceless document that was stolen during the Civil War, and recovered in an FBI sting operation 138 years later.

This story starts in a small room, on the third floor of the old Capitol building in Raleigh. In April of 1865, in the closing days of the Civil War, a Union soldier came into this room, looked through cabinets and found a folded up piece of parchment. That parchment turned out to be North Carolina’s original copy of the Bill of Rights.
"When the Bill of Rights was proposed in Congress, they created 14 original copies, one for each of the original states and one that the federal government kept," explained state archivist Sarah Koonts. "And North Carolina's was sent to us, and it has had a long and interesting journey."
That is an incredible understatement. Because over the next 138 years, the document itself was missing. We now know that a Union soldier sold the Bill of Rights to a family in Indiana for $5. That family kept it for more than a century before selling it to an antiques dealer named Wayne Pratt, who used to be a regular on the Antiques Roadshow on PBS.
In 2003, Pratt and his associates tried to sell the document to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia for $4 million. And that’s when then-North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley received a surprise phone call.
"I remember being up in the Southwest bedroom at a desk working on a State of the State address when I got this call that Governor Rendell from Pennsylvania was on the other line and wanted to speak to me," Easley said.
And Pennsylvania’s governor told Easley that somebody wanted to sell a copy of the Bill of Rights that was stolen from North Carolina.
"And I told him I was certainly surprised to hear that it had surfaced again because there's only two other times to my recollection,” Easley said. “And that I certainly want to figure out a way to get it. I did not want to give it up to Pennsylvania or anybody else, and it was our property and we would take that position."
After that, a lot of people get involved – including the FBI – and a special agent named Robert Wittman, who specialized in recovering priceless documents and works of art.
"Probably the most valuable piece that I ever recovered was the North Carolina copy of the Bill of Rights. The value on that has placed it close to $100 million — if it could be sold," Wittman said.
"In other words, if it could be brought legitimately to market and marketed to the collector societies, it can actually bring as much as $100 million," he added. "True reality though, of course, is zero because it belongs to the state of North Carolina. It's owned by the people of North Carolina. And, therefore, it can't be sold. It can't be passed. So it's actually zero."
So it’s worth a lot and nothing at the same, "the case with all stolen art," Wittman said.
Wittman and the FBI put together a sting operation. First, they got the National Constitution Center's then-CEO Joe Torsella to play along.
"What I assumed at the beginning of this was us calling and saying we’re going to buy it, why don’t you bring it over next Tuesday," Torsella said. "What wasn’t really clear to us, in the beginning, was how real this was going to need to be."
It was so real that Torsella and his attorneys negotiated a deal with Pratt, and on March 18, 2003, they showed up in the conference room of a Philadelphia law firm with paperwork and a check.
“So we actually had a check drawn up on the National Constitution Center,” Wittman said.
A cashier’s check for $4 million that was shown to the sellers when they arrived.
He added, “Of course it was not going to be paid, but we had it there."
Wittman was in the room undercover playing a wealthy philanthropist. The lawyer for the seller went into the room, looked over the paperwork and checked out the check.
"That's when he made the phone call, it was almost like a drug deal in some respect," he said. "You know, you see the money then you make the phone call to have the drugs delivered. And in this case it wasn't drugs. It was the North Carolina copy of the Bill of Rights."
A bike messenger showed up with a cardboard carrier. Wittman opened it up and took a look.
"I said, ‘That's really a neat looking piece, isn't it?’ It was like, ‘Wow that's the Bill of Rights,'" Wittman said. "It was just a eureka moment."
Right after that, someone in the room gave the signal to the five FBI agents waiting in another room to come in.
"He (the seller) was a bit surprised," Wittman recalled.
A few hours later, Governor Easley got another surprise phone call.
"And he said we got it," Easley said. "I said, 'Got what? What are you talking about?' He said, 'We got the Bill of Rights.'"
Two weeks after that, the Bill of Rights was flown back to Raleigh on the private jet of FBI Director Robert Mueller. It would take five years of legal wrangling with Pratt and others before, in 2008, the North Carolina copy of the Bill of Rights was officially declared to be property of the state. So, where is it now?
In a vault underneath the state archives building in downtown Raleigh.
"The main concern that we have with having this document on display all the time is fading," Koonts said. "When it was out of the state's custody, it was exposed to a lot of light a lot of natural and fluorescent light. So it is extremely faded in spots and we have been advised by an outside conservator to not have it on permanent display."
But from time to time, it does come out as part of an exhibit, and it usually draws a big crowd – proof that the Bill of Rights can’t belong to one of us, but it can belong to all of us.
For more on how the North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights stayed hidden for 138 years, and how it was proven that a really old piece of parchment really belonged to the state, you can find the answers in the newest episode of Away Message, Our State magazine’s podcast about hard to find people, places, and things. 

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Reward Price List Will Lead to Gardner Art Recovery

October 14, 2018, 11:30 pm

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, November 2018

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Fall Into Art Crime, September 2018

$

0

0

Gardner Art Reward Price List

Establish an itemized reward price list showing the amount that will be received for returning each of the stolen items, to accommodate the possibility that the 13 stolen Gardner artworks are no longer together.

Reward Total $10 million

Vermeer $5 million

Rembrandt Storm on the Sea $3 million

Rembrandt Lady and Gentleman in Black $1 million

Manet Chez Tortoni $500,000

After Rembrandt Obelisk painting $100,000

A bronze eagle finial
(c. 1813–1814) $100,000

Small Self-Portrait
by Rembrandt $50,000

An ancient Chinese Gu $50,000

La Sortie de Pesage

by Degas $ 50,000

Cortege aux Environs de Florence
by Degas $50,000

Three Mounted Jockeys
by Degas
(c. 1885–1888) $50,000

Program for an Artistic Soirée 1
by Degas
(1884) £25,000

Program for an Artistic Soirée 2
by Degas
(1884) ~$25,000

Stolen Art Watch, November 2018

November 1, 2018, 1:49 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Magna Carta, Fail, Portland Tiara Success, What's Next?

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Reward Price List Will Lead to Gardner Art Recovery

$

0

0

Police back on the trail of ‘world’s most wanted’ stolen Caravaggio painting

The oratory of San Lorenzo, Palermo, showing the space where the painting once hung.

There are new hopes of finding a lost Caravaggio masterpiece nearly 50 years after it vanished, with recent developments pointing to the artwork being hidden somewhere in Eastern Europe.

The Vatican called a meeting of experts in Rome to discuss new developments in the search for the stolen Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco, a priceless Caravaggio painting stolen from a Palermo church 49 years ago.
The theft of the Nativity takes second place on the FBI’s list of the top ten unsolved art crimes, and the lost painting is often described as the world’s “most wanted.”
The painting depicts Mary gazing at the newborn baby Jesus. It hung in the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily, until it was cut from its frame one stormy night in October 1969 by thieves using razor blades or box-cutters.
The theft happened the day after the painting was mentioned on a TV show about 'forgotten art treasures', Ansa writes.
Since its disappearance in 1969 the artwork’s fate has remained a mystery, the story of the as yet unsuccessful search has been filled with intrigue, espionage and allegations of mafia involvement.

The painting was at first thought to have been destroyed shortly after it disappeared. For years, it was thought that the Nativity might have been damaged beyond repair after being stored in a barn in the Sicilian countryside.
Despite this, investigators, both local and international, never gave up searching for the lost painting.
Past leads all led to dead ends. Earlier this year, mafia turncoat Gaetano Grado led investigators to believe the painting may have been smuggled to Switzerland, where he claimed it was cut into smaller pieces by a Swiss art dealer to make it easier to sell on behalf of the mafia.
But investigators now say they believe the Nativity is actually still intact and have hinted at its possible whereabouts.
Police investigators specialised in hunting down stolen art have found traces of the work and are convinced it’s still in one piece, Colonel Fernando Musella of the Carabinieri told a press conference on Friday.
Investigators have recently visited an unspecified city in Eastern Europe in connection with their enquiries, he added, hinting that there could yet be a happy ending to the story.
It appears that the recent investigations have disproved the claims of the repentant mafioso, as well as others before him, finding that he’d got it confused with another painting stolen from a Palermo church a year later.

“Many repentant mafia have talked about the theft of this masterpiece, each one providing a different version,” Philosopher Vittorio V. Alberti, one of the meeting’s organisers, told local media today.
The painting has become “a symbol of the fight against the mafia,” a Vatican spokesperson stated, adding that the meeting aimed to "reiterate the opposition to the mafia on the part of the Church” and get the search for the painting back into the public eye.
Alberti described the theft as a “civil and moral wound” that affects the whole of society.
"Organised crime has repeatedly attacked religious and cultural symbols. This painting is a symbol, an element of property, in quotation marks, of the church, but it’s a work that speaks to everyone,” he said.
Caravaggio is believed to have painted the Nativity in 1609, just one year before his death in Porto Ercole, Tuscany. The hell-raising artist was just 38 when he died.
He’d fled Rome after murdering a man in a fight over gambling debt, and spent the rest of his days on the run, passing through Naples and Malta before arriving in Sicily.
Today a high-quality copy of the Nativity, produced by an art laboratory in 2015, hangs in place of the original artwork above the altar in the Oratory of San Lorenzo.

ROME - The Vatican has called a conference of experts to try to find "the world's most sought-after lost painting", a Nativity by Caravaggio stolen from a Palermo church allegedly by the Mafia in 1969.
The meeting at Palazzo della Cancelleria on Monday will "reiterate the opposition to the mafias on the part of the Church, according to the example of the Blessed Giuseppe Puglisi", a priest gunned down by Cosa Nostra in Palermo in 1993, the Vatican said.
It aims to "put the Nativity at the centre of international debate so that the painting can finally be found".
The priceless painting by Caravaggio was first believed to have been destroyed shortly after it disappeared in 1969.
But investigators now say it is actually still intact and could be hidden somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Police specialised in hunting down stolen art have come upon traces of the work and are convinced it is still in one piece, Colonel Fernando Musella of the Carabinieri police told a press conference.
Investigators travelled recently to an unspecified city in Eastern Europe in connection with their enquiries, he added, hinting that there might be a happy ending to the story in the near future.
The painting is called The Nativity and it was painted by the Renaissance master in 1609, shortly before his death.
It was stolen from a Palermo church 39 years ago, the day after it was mentioned in a TV show about 'forgotten' art treasures.
News that the police were back on the trail came during the presentation of a new book - The Wall of Glass, by Giuseppe Quatriglio - which tells the story of the painting and the mystery of its disappearance.
A few years ago a Mafia turncoat alarmed art lovers by claiming that Caravaggio's last work was destroyed by the people who stole it. He said the thieves caused irreparable damage to the canvas as they tried to roll it up, making it unsellable even on the black market.
It was assumed by many that the painting had then been burnt in order to destroy all evidence of the theft.
But it appears that recent investigations have disproved the claims of the repentant mafioso, establishing that he was referring to another painting stolen from a Palermo church a year later.

Jewellery store owner purchased £12,000 stolen necklace from East Anglian burglary gang, court hears

A jewellery store owner who purchased a stolen £12,000 diamond necklace from an East Anglian criminal gang was “too busy” to ask for their ID, a court heard.

 

James Pateman, 55, of Wollens Brook, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire Picture: Staff photographer

Ammir Kohanzad, who owns Danesh International Jewellery in Hatton Garden, London, is one of four men on trial in connection with a gang which carried out more than 200 burglaries.
Norwich Crown Court previously heard how members of the gang targeted premises across the region between February and December 2017 - stealing more than £2m worth of property.
Kohanzad, 68, of Ingestre Road, Calver, London, is accused of handling stolen goods, which he denies.
Prosecutor William Carter told a jury on Wednesday a necklace was sold to the defendant on November 2, 2017, by Charlie Webb and John Eli Loveridge.
Both men have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle.Mr Carter said the necklace was later identified as being stolen from a property in Brinkley, Cambridgeshire, on October 18 last year.
During that incident, burglars stole around £51,000-worth of items which belonged to a semi-retired antiques dealer.
Mr Carter said Webb and Loveridge were monitored by police as they travelled to Kohanzad’s shop in London on the morning of November 2.
All three men were caught on the shop’s CCTV cameras as the transaction was made.

 

Thomas Pateman, 54, of Fen Road, Chesterton, Cambridgeshire Picture: Staff photographer

Mr Carter said: “Webb had a small brown case in his hand, which he had taken from underneath his top and he placed it on the counter.
“The item [inside] was an antique necklace worth £12,000 or more.”
The court heard how Webb wrote “something” on a piece of paper and was paid in cash. Both men left the store within five minutes.
Mr Carter said: “He was asked what steps did he take to establish the people who were selling it had the right to sell it.”
“He [Kohanzad] said he had not asked them for any identification. He said it had been a busy day and he did not really have the time.
Mr Carter said after the two men left, “a slightly odd thing happened” at about 2.24pm.
He said a text message was sent to Kohanzad’s phone from someone who said they were “John’s mum”.
“The message says ‘can you get this? It’s John’s mum’,” Mr Carter said.
“He [Kohanzad] responds ‘I can try to get something like that’.”

 

Simon Oakley, who owns Stratton Quick Fit in Long Stratton, is one of four men who went on trial yesterday (October 16) in connection with the break-ins. Picture: Staff photographer

“It is curious and the crown would say that message is somewhat undermining of Mr Kohanzad’s claim that he did not know the men.”
The court heard that police executed a search warrant on his store at 5pm that day.
He was interviewed by officers on November 3.
Mr Carter said: “The significance of the arrival of police might have put Mr Kohanzad on notice that dealing with these individuals was not good for his professional health.”
But he said that on November 5, Kohanzad received another visit from Webb, Loveridge, Joseph Holmes - who has also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle - and another unidentified man.
This time, Mr Carter said Kohanzad paid £5,300 for gold they were selling.
Two days later on November 7, police again raided his shop.
Kohanzad was arrested in January 2018.
During a police interview he told officers he paid £1,500 for the necklace.
Mr Carter said: “He said he would have asked them for ID but he had been so busy he had not.”
Kohanzad told police he asked the men where the necklace had come from, and was told they had “inherited” it, the court heard.
James Pateman
Also standing trial accused of handling stolen goods was James Pateman, 55, of Wollens Brook, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire.
Mr Carter said Pateman was found with stolen silverware worth up to £30,000 in the back of his car on October 19 – one day after the Brinkley burglary.
Pateman, who has denied the charge against him, was arrested after being spotted buying silverware from two men in Royston, Hertfordshire.
“It is not suggested by prosecution that the meeting had anything at all to do with the property stolen at Brinkley the day before,” Mr Carter said.
“What did happen was that the dealings with these two men led to his arrest and search of his vehicle.”
Mr Carter said Pateman was arrested after a member of the public, who witnessed the deal, grew suspicious and called police.
At 3.20pm on October 19, Pateman, who was driving a red Range Rover, was stopped by officers.
Mr Carter said there was a quantity of cash in the lining of the ceiling of his vehicle, a red suitcase containing silver jewellery in the rear footwell, and silverware in a basket on the back seat.
Pateman told police he bought the items from a man he did not know at a car park in Peterborough.
Mr Carter said the silverware was later shown to the victim of the Brinkley burglary.
“He has identified almost all of the silverware in the car as his property,” Mr Carter said.
“He gave a value of around £25,000 to £30,000.”
Mr Carter added that some of the items in Pateman’s car were not linked to the Brinkley burglary.
Pateman was arrested but chose to answer “no comment” to the questions, the court heard.
He was later interviewed by police in January 2018, where he produced a receipt for the items, dated October 18.
Attempts to trace the name of the seller on the receipt had “drawn a blank” with police, Mr Carter said.
He added: “On the face of it, Mr Pateman is producing a receipt for items bought before they were stolen.”
In a police interview, Pateman said two men he did not know turned up at his dad’s yard on October 18 asking if he dealt in gold or silver.
Mr Carter said: “They told him they had a shop in Peterborough which had closed down and they wanted to sell stock.”
Pateman told police he paid £4,600 for the items.
When asked about his previous comments regarding the purchase from a man in Peterborough, Pateman told police he had been “misunderstood” by the officer who had “got it wrong”, the court heard.
Thomas Pateman
The court heard how Thomas Pateman, who runs TTJ’s Cash for Gold, a company which buys and sells precious metals, was raided by police in May last year.
Mr Carter said police found various gold and silver items which were subsequently identified as belonging to burglary victims.
He added that when officers searched his home address, they found more than £12,500 in cash.
The court heard the majority of stolen items were found in a plastic bag in a grey bin towards the rear of Pateman’s shop.
Mr Carter said as of May last year, police were “well aware” there had been a spate of burglaries.
In order to identify the owners of jewellery, police held open days where victims could come and see the recovered items.
Mr Carter said: “They did identify stolen property amongst the property seized.”
Pateman, 54, of Fen Road, Chesterton, Cambridgeshire, denies a charge of handling stolen goods.
Simon Oakley
Simon Oakley, of Alburgh Road, Hempnall, is accused of conspiracy to commit burglary.
The 45-year-old, who owns Stratton Quickfit in Long Stratton, denies the charge.
Mr Carter said Oakley supplied false number plates for stolen vehicles used by the gang.
He described him as an “integral part” of the conspiracy.
The court heard how Oakley’s business had equipment designed to print licence plates.
Mr Carter said when officers checked the printing machine, they found a “very large number” of plates which they knew had been used for vehicles involved in burglaries.
The court heard how the gang would take high-end vehicles from homes, change the number plates, and then use them for other crimes.
Mr Carter said that on February 6 a black Audi RS4 was stolen from Spalding in Lincolnshire.
Two days later, Oakley received a text message containing a number plate from a man called Timothy Stone-Parker.
Mr Carter told the jury Stone-Parker had already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle.
“It does beg a number of questions,” he said. “It may be that there is a perfectly innocent explanation for this, but simply texting a number plate does tend to suggest that no other information was needed at that time as far as Mr Oakley was concerned.”
Mr Carter told the jury that Oakley’s phone records showed he was contacted by other individuals who had already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burglary. He said when Oakley was interviewed by police, he told officers he did not know everyone he was making number plates for or “what they were doing with them”.
The trial continues.

City gets $750,000 insurance settlement for 2016 theft of 7 Warhol prints from museum

A digital image of American artist Andy Warhol's "Campbell's Soup I (Tomato), a 1968 screenprint that was among seven stolen from Springfield Art Museum April 7, 2016.

Springfield Art Museum

The city-operated Springfield Art Museum has received a $750,000 insurance settlement for the seven Andy Warhol Campbell's soup can prints stolen in April 2016.
Museum director Nick Nelson told the News-Leader on Friday the settlement was reached months ago and the museum has the $750,000 in hand.
The money will be used to purchase new art objects for the museum's collection, Nelson said. He has been director since 2012.
He did not know if it the money will be used specifically to purchase replacement prints for the seven stolen. They were taken in the early hours of April 7, 2016.
The News-Leader asked Nelson what would happen if any or all of the stolen prints were recovered: Would the city then have to refund money to the insurance company?
He also was asked for a copy of the settlement agreement as well as a copy of the city's insurance policy regarding theft of art from the museum.

Nelson referred the question and the document requests to Doug Stone, the city's risk manager. Stone could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.
Warhol, who died in 1987, painted 32 cans of Campbell's Soup. They were first displayed in 1962. A limited number of prints were made.
The Springfield Art Museum had a collection of 10 Campbell's Soup prints made in 1968; seven were stolen.
Gul Coskun of Coskun Fine Art is a major Warhol dealer in Europe, with offices in the United Kingdom, France and Switzerland.
In April of 2016, the News-Leader quoted Coskun; she estimated the value of a collection of all 10 at $750,000.
She said in an email to the News-Leader that "Tomato Soup I" is the most expensive and sought-after print, followed by the "Chicken Soup I" print.

Both were among the seven stolen from the Springfield Art Museum. The others taken were:
"Campbell's Soup I (Beef)"
"Campbell's Soup I (Vegetable)"
"Campbell's Soup I (Onion)"
"Campbell's Soup I (Green Pea)"
"Campbell's Soup I (Black Bean)"
"Consommé (Beef),""Pepper Pot" and "Cream of Mushroom" were not stolen from the museum. They were left behind.
The museum acquired the collection in 1985 through a gift by Ronald K., Robert C. and Larry H. Greenburg.
No one has been arrested in connection with the theft. It has not been revealed how it occurred.
The museum reported the crime to Springfield police at 10:03 a.m. April 7, 2016.
A police report indicates three Springfield police officers worked the case that day, one of them a member of the department’s property crimes unit. Three days later, another officer followed up.
Five days later, a computer forensic analyst with the police department contributed to the investigation.
Robert Wittman headed the FBI National Art Crime Team. He retired and became a private art security and recovery consultant.
He was interviewed by the News-Leader in June 2016. He expressed surprise at the time that there had been no public developments in the case.
More: Art museum's security in the spotlight after Warhol soup cans theft (2016)
"I’m not criticizing anybody," Wittman told the News-Leader from his office in Chester Hills, Pennsylvania. "It’s just strange to me that after two months, there’s no movement on that case."
He was not retained by Springfield Art Museum.
Wittman said in 2016 he believes the Warhol prints eventually will be recovered.
"Absolutely, the chances are very high," he said. "Collectors are not going to spend a lot of money for something they can't openly own.
"Now, it may take some time," Wittman said: a few months — or many years.
He cited Norman Rockwell paintings stolen in the late 1970s that were found in 2001.
"We'll see them when they come back to market," Wittman said. "At one point or another, everything comes back to market.
"Because the artwork outlasts us. It's here after we’re gone."

The pros and cons of stealing fine art: An easy crime, but impossible to sell

Bloomberg|

Jun 26, 2018, 06.38 PM IST

Stolen Art Watch, Magna Carta, Fail, Portland Tiara Success, What's Next?

November 23, 2018, 6:27 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Dr No, Dr Maybe, Dr Yes, Empty Frames January 2019

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, November 2018

$

0

0

Man tries to steal Magna Carta from Salisbury Cathedral

An American tourist who tackled a knife-wielding thief trying to steal a £20million Magna Carta from Salisbury Cathedral has spoken about his heroics.

Matt Delacambre managed to hold onto the hooded man until security were able to arrive and apprehend the suspect.

The 56-year-old said: ‘I couldn’t let him get away with it. The Magna Carta is one of the most important documents in the world.’ 

He told the Sun: ‘There was a lot of confusion but no panic or screaming. It was very English.’   

The historic document dating back to 1215 and described as the ‘best original’ out of the four copies made, was enclosed in a two-inch thick glass case in the cathedral and had been on view for the tens of thousands of visitors who visit every year.

Police said that they had been alerted after someone smashed the glass case and after arriving at the cathedral, they conducted a thorough search of the grounds and arrested a 45-year-old man on suspicion of trying to steal the Magna Carta.

Courageous staff helped wrestle the suspect to the ground for 12 minutes after he attempted to flee, Rev Canon Nicholas Papadopulos said, adding today was the first time anyone had tried to steal the Magna Carta.

Rev Canon Nicholas Papadopulos hailed the bravery of Mr Delacambre.

He said: ‘Matt acted couragously and I’m hugely grateful.’  

A replica has been put in its place as security measures at the cathedral are assessed.

‘The damage to the glass case triggered the alarm,’ he said. ‘The man who attacked the case then left the Chapter House.

‘There were cathedral volunteers, staff and members of the public in the vicinity at the time. He ran into the Cloister and tried to leave the Cathedral through the works yard. He was then detained by our works yard staff.’

Raymond Molin-Wilkinson, 66, of Salisbury, Wilts, was taking pictures around the city when he saw a group of around 100 people evacuated from the cathedral.

‘I was just outside the building when it happened,’ he said. ‘There was suddenly an evacuation I think – there was an alarm going in the building.

‘The fire brigade and police arrived on the scene, and the police went to the back door of the building and took a gentleman away in the back of their van.

‘There were about 100 people standing outside the cathedral a mixture of tourists and choristers in their blue gowns.

‘They seemed to be quite calm, with many of the drinking coffees and still eating their cakes from the cathedral café – I think they thought it was just a false fire alarm.

‘They were there for about an hour – it was around 6pm that they were allowed back inside the cathedral.’ 

A spokesman for Wiltshire Police said: ‘A 45-year-old man is in custody this morning arrested on suspicion of the attempted theft of the Magna Carta.

‘Shortly before 5pm yesterday alarms were activated at Salisbury Cathedral after an attempt was made to smash the glass box surrounding the Magna Carta. Staff were alerted and police were called.

‘A man matching the description given by witnesses was arrested on suspicion of attempted theft, possession of an offensive weapon and criminal damage and has been taken to Melksham Police custody for questioning. He remains there,” said the spokesman.

‘The Magna Carta has not been damaged and nobody was injured in the incident. We are aware there were a number of witnesses to the incident who may not have spoken to police.

‘If this was you, please get in touch via 101 and quote crime reference number 541800101438.’

The disturbance once again thrusts the Wiltshire city into the spotlight after it became the focal point of tensions between Russia and Britain.

Two Russian men were accused of attempting to assassinate former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury using a highly toxic nerve agent.

The pair prompted ridicule when they claimed they had been visiting the city as tourists and wanted to see the cathedral. 

The Magna Carta, Latin for Great Charter, was brought into law under King John of Runnymede on 15th June 1215,.

It was credited as being one of the first documents to limit the power of the crown.

The charter was imposed upon the king by a group of his subjects, the feudal barons, and limited his powers on the likes of punishing a ‘freeman’, unless through the law of the land.

But the document didn’t last long, with Pope Innocent III annulling it in August 1215, because it was a ‘shameful and demeaning agreement, forced upon the King by violence and fear’.

After King John died, his successor Henry III thought it was a good idea and brought it back.

Three clauses of the 63 are still in force today – freedom of the English Church, the ancient liberties of the City of London and a right to due process.

It was written in Latin by hand, by an expert scribe, on parchment. The Magna Carta was not signed, but sealed, and at the bottom of our Magna Carta you can see the marks where King John’s seal was once attached.

There are just four remaining copies of the Magna Carta. Two are kept in the British Library, one is in Lincoln Cathedral and one at Salisbury Cathedral, which is the best preserved manuscipt.

Shortly after the originals were sealed, 250 copies were made but just 17 are thought to still exist.

Thieves smash armoured glass and steal priceless Cartier tiara from the Welbeck Estate

Detectives are appealing for information about a silver Audi S5 suspected to have been involved in the offence.

The famous Portland Tiara, a national treasure that has been seen by countless members of the public, has been stolen.
Burglars broke into the Portland Collection Gallery at the Welbeck Estate in Worksop, between 9.45pm and 10pm on Tuesday night, November 20.
Police said they stole the tiara and a diamond brooch from an armoured glass display case while the alarms were sounding.
Detectives are appealing for information about a silver Audi S5 suspected to have been involved in the offence.
"The Portland Tiara is one of the great historic tiaras of Great Britain," said Richard Edgcumbe, curator of jewellery at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
He added: "Since its creation by Cartier in 1902, using diamonds from the historic collections of the Dukes of Portland, it has been recognised as a jewel of supreme importance, a superb design magnificently executed."
The 6th Duke of Portland commissioned Cartier to create the Portland Tiara for his wife, Winifred, Duchess of Portland.
She wore it to the 1902 coronation of King Edward VII.
The Duchess was one of four pall-bearers at Queen Alexandra’s anointing.
The centre-piece of the tiara is the Portland Diamond, which dates from the 19th century.
It is flanked by two diamond drops and other pendant diamonds, all set in gold and silver.
The burglars also stole a diamond brooch, which was in the same glass display case.
The brooch is composed of diamond clusters that previously stood at the apex of the tiara.

These gems can be seen on the tiara in a painting of Duchess Winifred at the anointing of Queen Alexandra but are absent from it in a 1925 portrait of the Duchess, in which she wears the tiara low on her head as a bandeau.
Detective Inspector Neil Humphris said: "We're pursuing a number of lines of enquiry but we believe there are people out there who may have crucial information that could help with our investigation.
"We particularly want to hear from anyone who has any information about a silver Audi S5 which is suspected to have been involved in this offence.
"This vehicle was found abandoned and burnt out in Cross Lane, Blidworth, about half-an-hour after the incident.
Art Hostage Comments:
Associates of the man who tried, thankfully in vain, to steal the Magna Carta, have stolen the Portland Tiara to use as leverage to get indictments dropped against their criminal associate.
The Portland Tiara will be offered back if the indictments against the attempted Magna Carta Thief are dropped.

Stolen Art Watch, Dr No, Dr Maybe, Dr Yes, Empty Frames January 2019

January 3, 2019, 4:22 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Empty Frames Season Two Finale, Art Crime Snapshot Febuary 2019

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Magna Carta, Fail, Portland Tiara Success, What's Next?

$

0

0

New episode! We talk to Paul Turbo Hendry about the idea of a Dr. No, a rich person who buys stolen artwork for their personal collection.
Do they exist? Turbo has a few examples.
Subscribe at http://Stitcherpremium.com  and get a free month with code FRAMES.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 Dr No, Hans Heinrich "Heini" Thyssen-Bornemisz’s Stolen & Looted Art Collection

http://universe.byu.edu/index.php/2012/01/10/police-beat-9/

Jan. 5 – Somewhere between 1970-1985, a piece of art valued at $218,000 was stolen from BYU campus. After being stolen the “Silver Chalice” was sold between a number of different art dealers before finally landing in Switzerland with Count Thyssen-Bornemisz’s collection. BYU negotiated with Thyssen-Bornemisz’s estate and the piece of art was returned to BYU.

----------------------------------------------------

Miami lawyer leads legal charge against Spain to return Pissarro painting looted by Nazis

Cassirer’s great grandson is fighting a legal battle with the Spanish museum to return the painting. - The Cassirer Family Trust, public domain

Gazing through the window of his Paris hotel room in 1897, influential Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro painted a dreamy street scene alive with suited men, horse-drawn carriages and bustling shops. More than a century later, the St. Honoré St., Afternoon, Effect of Rain now hangs as a signature piece in Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
But the oil-on-canvas masterpiece has a dark past: the Nazis strong-armed it away from Lilly Cassirer, whose prominent Jewish family owned an art gallery in Germany in the 1930s.
After years of legal battles, the Cassirer family — with help from prominent Miami lawyer Steve Zack — next week will finally get a chance to convince a federal judge to order Spain to return the priceless work of art. Monday’s trial in a Los Angeles federal court will be closely watched in the art world, and for those who have fought for decades to return art looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
For Zack, a former American Bar Association and Florida Bar president, the case has special resonance. He is Jewish. And Zack and his family were forced to flee Cuba by the island’s Communist authoritarian regime.

“This is important in different ways to many communities,” Zack said of the case. “Jewish and Cuban families suffered, from the Nazis and the Casto regime. When we took on this case, it had a significant meaning far beyond just one case.”

Tracking down Nazi-looted art has been a priority for world leaders, who this month celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Washington Principles, a treaty aimed at returning the pieces to their rightful owners.

Miami lawyer Stephen Zack

- Boies Schiller Flexner law firm

The Nazi regime stole an estimated 600,000 paintings before and during World War II, Stuart E. Eizenstat, a U.S. State Department adviser who helped establish the treaty, said at the conference earlier this month. He told the conference that at least 100,000 paintings remain unrecovered, according to the New York Times, and singled out five countries, including Spain, for resisting efforts to return art stolen by Hitler’s henchmen.

As U.S. deputy secretary of the Treasury under the Clinton administration, Eizenstat urged Spain to return the Cassirer family’s painting to no avail.
The odyssey of the Pissarro painting began in 1900, when his exclusive agent sold the work to the Cassirers, who owned a prominent gallery in Berlin. Lilly Cassirer inherited the piece in 1926, and displayed it her parlor. By 1939, as the Nazis were systematically destroying Jewish society and preparing to unleash their war machine on Europe, Cassirer was forced to sell them the painting for a paltry sum in exchange for safe passage out of Germany.
During the war, the Nazis sold the painting to an anonymous buyer. For decades, the Cassirers believed the painting was lost, until a family friend in 2000 spotted it at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum.
So what happened? The painting — today valued at at least $40 million — wound up in the hands of (Dr No) Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a member of the famous German industrialist family. Records show he had purchased the painting in 1976 from St. Louis collector Sydney Schoenberg through the Stephen Hahn Gallery in New York.
Spain later bought Thyssen-Bornemisza’s art collection for display at the government-run museum that bears his name. The baron died in 2002. For years after the painting was spotted, the Cassirer family repeatedly asked the museum to return the painting.

It was not until 2005 that Claude Cassirer, Lilly’s grandson, filed a federal lawsuit in Southern California. A trial judge dismissed the case five years later, a decision overturned in 2013 by a federal appeals court. Claude has since died, but his son, David Cassirer, is now the plaintiff, along with the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County.
“There is a widespread recognition by civilized nations that is important to restore looted art to the rightful owners. The Spanish government and the Spanish museum, in this respect, is contrary to international norms. And frankly, it’s reprehensible,” said lawyer David Boies , who also represents the family..

Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Musuem

cortesía Leonardo Boix

In an unusual court room scenario, the Los Angeles federal judge must rule under Spanish legal standards. Spain and the museum will argue that Thyssen-Bornemisza bought the masterpiece in good faith — that the baron never knew the painting was ripped off from the family by the Nazis.
“No evidence of bad faith can be found in the Baron’s ownership of the painting – during which time the painting was publicized and publicly exhibited in international tours between 1979 and 1986, and in the 1988 magazine Architectural Digest,” the museum’s legal team, headed by Thaddeus Stauber, wrote in court documents.
Stauber declined to comment before the trial.
The Cassirer family’s legal team must prove that museum was an encubrador — in Spanish law, an accessory to the theft of the art decades earlier.
They point out that Thyssen-Bornemisza was a sophisticated art buyer who employed a cadre of experts to examine works. When he bought the painting in New York, it still had a label identifying it as part of the Cassirer Gallery in Berlin. Within the art world, it was widely knownthat the Cassirer painting had been targeted by the Nazis.
“It was easy to find out this was looted,” Boies said.
In the years after the purchase, Thyssen-Bornemisza also fudged details of the purchase to try and hide that he knew the Pissarro was a stolen work of art, according to the lawyers.
The trial is before U.S. District Judge John Walter, and is expected to last at least three days.

David Cassirer is suing Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum to recover a valuable Pisarro painting that was stolen by the Nazis in 1939, and later wound up hanging in the gallery.- Cassirer family.

When Pablo Picasso Was Suspected of Stealing the Mona Lisa

On August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from Paris’s Louvre Museum. It was a Monday—the museum was closed and security was minimal—and the thief had reportedly spent the weekend plotting the heist while hiding in one of the museum’s closets.
At the time, security at the Louvre was abysmal. There were less than 150 security personnel in charge of guarding 250,000 artifacts, and none of the paintings were bolted to the walls. (The Mona Lisa, for example, hung from four measly hooks.) According to Ian Shank at Artsy, “Months before the heist, one French reporter had spent the night in a Louvre sarcophagus to expose the museum’s paltry surveillance.”
After the painting's disappearance, France’s borders were effectively closed, with officials examining every vehicle crossing the country's eastern border. Media coverage of the heist spread across the globe, turning the little-known painting into a household name. The Paris-Journal offered 50,000 francs for the painting’s return. Soon, a tip from an art thief would cause police to turn their attention toward one of the country’s most promising young artists: Pablo Picasso.
Picasso, who had moved to Paris a decade earlier, lived with a gaggle of Bohemians dubbed la bande de Picasso. Among this crew was the poet and writer Guillaume Apollinaire, whose former secretary was Honore-Joseph Géry Pieret, a Belgian man of questionable morals. Shortly after the Mona Lisa was stolen, Pieret—lured by the possibility of a cash reward—stepped into the Paris-Journal's office and claimed that he had lifted art from the Louvre before and had given the works to "friends."
Pieret was telling the truth. In 1907, he had stolen at least two Iberian sculptures made in the 3rd or 4th century BCE and sold them to Picasso, who paid him 50 francs per piece. (Picasso used these artifacts to inspire his work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. [PDF]) That wasn't all. According to Nick Mafi at The Daily Beast, Pieret also stole a similar piece from the Louvre in 1911 and placed it on Apollinaire’s mantel.
The police read about Pieret's exploits with great interest. They believed that the people who were in possession of these sculptures might also have the Mona Lisa. And they didn’t have much trouble piecing together who, exactly, the thief's friends were.
Realizing that they were in deep trouble, Picasso and Apollinaire packed the Iberian sculptures into a suitcase and ran off in the middle of the night with plans of throwing the artworks into the river Seine. But when the two artists reached the water, they could not will themselves to dump the statues. Instead, Apollinaire visited the Paris-Journal the next morning, deposited the statues, and demanded that the newspaper give him anonymity. The newspaper agreed ... until the authorities stepped in.
Within days of Apollinaire's visit to the newspaper, the police had detained him. In early September, Picasso was ordered to appear before a magistrate. When asked if he knew Apollinaire, the terrified painter lied. “I have never seen this man,” he replied.
Recalling the events, Picasso said, “I saw Guillaume’s expression changed. The blood ebbed from his face. I am still ashamed.” As the proceedings continued, Picasso wept.
Although both men were indeed in possession of stolen art, the judge determined that the situation had nothing to do with the Mona Lisa’s disappearance and decided to throw the case out. Two years later, both men would be cleared of any possible connection to the crime when police discovered the painting had been stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian artist who had been working at the Louvre.

With the Word ‘Stolen,’ the Uffizi’s Director Shames Germany for Not Returning a Painting Looted During World War II

The German-born director has displayed a framed photograph of the Dutch still-life with a label declaring that it is "stolen" as talks hit a stalemate.

Henri Neuendorf, January 3, 2019

The director of Florence’s Uffizi Galleries, Eike Schmidt, has called on Germany to return a Dutch still-life looted by Nazi troops during World War II. The painting was plundered by retreating Nazi soldiers in 1943 and disappeared for decades until 1991, when it was rediscovered in a private collection in Germany.

Vase of Flowers by the Dutch master Jan van Huysum (1682-1749) was originally brought to Florence by Grande Duke Leopoldo II in 1824 and was on display at the historic Pitti Palace until 1940, when it was moved to a nearby village for safekeeping.

Schmidt, who is German-born, told Reuters: “Germany has a moral duty to return this painting to our museum. This story is preventing the wounds inflicted by World War II and the horrors of Nazism from healing.”

The black-and-white photograph that hangs in the original work’s place

at the Pitti Palace in Florence. 

Photo: Uffizi Galleries via Twitter.

Negotiations for the return of the painting have stalled as intermediaries working on behalf of the family that holds the work have demanded payment. The Uffizi cannot launch a lawsuit in this case because under German law the statue of limitations, set at 30 years, has expired.

“Germany should not apply the statute of limitations to works of art stolen during the war,” Schmidt said. The director has displayed a framed, black-and-white scale photograph of the missing work in the place where it once hung at the Pitti Palace. It is emblazoned with the word “stolen” written in Italian, English, and German for all to see, in an effort to shame the owners into giving up the painting. The Uffizi also published the image on its Twitter account to more than 29,000 followers.

A label explaining how the painting was looted during World War II. 

Photo: Uffizi Galleries via Twitter.

But for now the struggle for the return of the painting remains unresolved. If Schmidt is successful it could be a great parting gift for the museum and Italy. He is due to leave in 2020 to become the director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

French antiquities dealers slam ‘shocking’ report on restituting African art

Dealers’ association seeks meeting with culture minister over fears report will open the door to numerous restitution claims for a range of artefacts

Anna Sansom3rd January 2019 10:22 GMT

Courtesy of Galerie Flak

France’s syndicate of antique dealers has demanded a meeting with the country’s new culture minister Franck Reister after the organisation was not consulted on the recent Savoy-Sarr restitution report, which recommends the return of African works to the continent.

In a letter to Reister in December, Mathias Ary Jan, the president of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA), called for the consequences of the proposals in the report to be evaluated, stating that “the risks of extensions to other geographical areas and periods of history do not seem to have been anticipated”. He wrote: “This arduous and inefficient arrangement risks putting the European art market at a disadvantage while Brexit is fully under way, restricting Paris’s place and becoming a mechanism that your administration will not be able to support [in terms of export licences].” In a statement, the SNA also expressed concern about how the report may affect objects from the Americas, Asia, the Mediterranean and other European countries.

The SNA, which has 20 tribal art dealer members, held a meeting in December to discuss the report’s possible impact on the market. “We decided to reunite the art market players in the hope of shedding light on this situation,” Ary Jan says. “We’re all stupefied that we weren’t consulted.” Following the meeting, members from the organisation were received at France’s ministry of culture, though not by the minister himself; another meeting is being planned for early this year.

“We’re public players, it’s easy to find us, we’re all in the same area of St-Germain-des-Prés,” says Julien Flak, the director of Galerie Flak. “We’re shocked by how unbalanced the report is and the suggestion that all the objects collected during scientific expeditions must be returned without any investigation.”

Only two dealers consulted

The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, known as the Savoy-Sarr report, was commissioned by the French president Emmanuel Macron in March 2018. The document details an inventory of dozens of thousands of works taken from African countries to be returned. Further, in November, it prompted Macron to promise Benin the restitution of 26 statues and regalia seized during France’s sacking of Abomey in 1892 which are currently housed at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris.

The authors only consulted two dealers for their report: Robert Vallois in Paris and Didier Claes in Brussels. But others in the trade felt this number to be insufficient.

Mathias Ary Jan, president of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires.© Didier Plowy

Many tribal art dealers feel that their work in restoring and preserving pieces, documenting information about them and helping to establish collections, has been misrepresented and point to the lack of a legal framework around restitution. “There’s no law in France to enable [the restitution of] African heritage according to presidential desire, so for the moment the market is not impacted because no laws have been passed,” the dealer Bernard Dulon says.

Moreover, many dealers are concerned that the report may discourage private collectors from lending works of art for museum exhibitions, and deter new collectors from entering the market. “People will be worried for a while and private collectors will be more discreet and reticent,” the Paris-based dealer Alain de Monbrison says. “I’d be astonished if a private collector would loan a sculpture to a French museum now and it’s uncertain that there’ll be any new collectors arriving.”

Hélène Leloup, an art historian, collector and dealer who began acquiring works from Africa in the 1950s and makes acquisitions from Malian, Guinean and Ivorian dealers, says collectors are “disappointed” and dealers are being treated “as if the works were stolen when some people bought things in Africa”.

“A lot of us are shell-shocked because this virulent, aggressive and incomplete report opens the door to repatriation requests from any culture in the world regarding any item in French museums.” says Anthony Meyer, an SNA board member and dealer of Oceanic and Eskimo art who belongs to a group of 25 experts who purchase pieces for the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac. Suddenly confronted with the possibility of returning these works is frustrating, he says: “If these pieces had not become so expensive over the years, nobody would want them back.”

Laurent Dodier, a tribal art dealer in Normandy and SNA member who participates in Parcours des Mondes in Paris each September, identifies another problematic possibility in the wake of the report’s restitution suggestion: “If the pieces are returned to Africa and end up being sold [under a regime change], they could come back onto the market in ten years’ time, unfortunately.”

Market upset

Despite the market’s upset after the release of the report, the Sotheby’s sale of African and Oceanic art in Paris on 12 December went reasonably well, generating €4.4m. The top lot, a Luba Shankadi neck rest from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, fetched €1.75m (with fees, est €1.5-€2.5m); a Bamana head-dress from Mali soared to more than double its estimate when it hammered for €693,000 (with fees) as did a Senufo statue from Ivory Coast that went for €187,000 (with fees).

According to Alexis Maggiar, the European head of African and Oceanic Art at Sotheby’s, because the suggestions in the Savoy-Sarr report have not yet been implemented, “it’s probably too early for collectors, or for any of us, to say [more about its impact]”. He adds that a key determining factor for serious collectors has always been provenance and “as long as our research is diligent and thorough, and collectors feel confident in the provenance we provide, we can only imagine that their desire for great pieces will remain undimmed”.

A Luba Shankadi neck rest from the Democratic Republic of the Congo fetched €1.75m at Sotheby's Paris in December 2018. Sotheby’s/Art Digital Studio

Meanwhile, Christie’s released a statement in light of the report that supports the aims of its proposals: “The Savoy-Sarr report examines complex and controversial issues surrounding cultural property. Maintaining a responsible market for cultural property is a matter of central importance to Christie’s and we value the role we have played in handling great works of art from throughout the world over the centuries.”

Yet the auctioneer Alexandre Giquello of the Paris auction house Binoche et Giquello, which had a sale of African and Oceanic Art on 14 December, is less forgiving about the implications in Savoy-Sarr’s assessment. “According to the report, colonial France organised systematic plundering in Africa, but that’s historically false,” he says.

Arguing that the French salvaged, purchased or received as bestowals many works of art, and that the word “restitution” has been misapplied, Giquello has written to the culture ministry to request a meeting, separately from the SNA. “I’m looking to sensitise the authorities on a problem far more complex than what’s in the report, which didn’t look into the 100 years of the African art market,” he says. “It’s highly disagreeable to be seen as the villains and have to justify ourselves. There’s a lot of love in all of this and the report is very far away from that.”
 Hollywood Celeb Burglar caught, Stash Recovered:
 https://abcnews.go.com/US/lapd-announces-arrest-recovery-items-worth-millions-series/story?id=60125383

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article222261510.html#storylink=cpy

Stolen Art Watch, Empty Frames Season Two Finale, Art Crime Snapshot Febuary 2019

January 31, 2019, 10:05 pm

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Beware The Ides Of March 2019

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Dr No, Dr Maybe, Dr Yes, Empty Frames January 2019

$

0

0

New episode! In our season 2 finale we chat with our pal the Muddy River Fact Checker and get into some Gardner Heist Minutia. Subscribe now at http://StitcherPremium.com ! #podcast#truecrime#gardnerheist#gardnermuseum#art#artheist#artcrime

Russian Art Thief Confesses to Stealing Painting to Settle Debts — Reports

Denis Chuprikov / Interior Ministry

The suspect in one of the most brazen art heists in recent history has confessed to having stolen prominent artist Arkhip Kuindzhi’s painting over the weekend to pay for his debts, Russian media have reported.
Kuindzhi’s 1908 “Ai Petri, Crimea” was briefly stolen from Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery on Sunday before police recovered it in a basement on the outskirts of the city. The suspect, identified as Crimean native Denis Chuprikov, 32, initially said he did not remember what had happened that day.
Citing the investigation, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported that Chuprikov had acknowledged the crime after police showed him surveillance video of the heist, which shows how a suspect casually lifts the painting off the wall and strolls past visitors.

“Chuprikov confessed to the theft, saying that he had decided on it spontaneously because of debts,” Kommersant reported Monday, citing unnamed sources.
Police are looking for possible accomplices in what they are treating as a pre-planned heist of an object of special cultural value, a crime that carries a jail term of up to 15 years.

Read More

A Daring Theft in a Moscow Museum

“Ai Petri, Crimea", a mountain scene, is worth around $1 million, state television said, though it was insured for only around $200,000. Chuprikov reportedly has a criminal record, including charges of drug possession and police disobedience pressed in the last few months.
Police said that the artwork had been put up on sale on a popular online marketplace for a mere 2.5 million rubles ($37,000).
"In a rating of the most stupid crimes of the 21st century, he has grounds to deserve an honorable mention,” Vladislav Kononov, a Culture Ministry official, was cited as saying.

Oops! British Aristocrat Accidentally Bought Stolen, 7th-Century Sculptures As 'Garden Ornaments'

In 2004, two chunky limestone reliefs depicting Catholic saints were stolen from a medieval church in Burgos, Spain. The reliefs dated to the seventh century, weighed about 110 lbs.(50 kilograms) apiece and were thought to be worth many millions of dollars. Earlier this week, professional art detective Arthur Brand found them — moldering in the dirt and leaves of a British country garden.
"The thieves wanted to sell [the reliefs] and make a lot of money, but soon found out they stole world heritage that would be extremely difficult to sell," Brand told the French news site AFP (Agence France-Presse). "So, they decided to sell them as garden ornaments." [30 of the World's Most Valuable Treasures That Are Still Missing]
According to AFP, those "ornaments" were purchased several years ago by a well-off British aristocrat who had no idea about their true provenance. Brand, who spent eight years tracking the reliefs from dealer to dealer across Europe, estimates that the unwitting aristocrat probably spent about $65,000 (50,000 pounds) apiece to add the artifacts to his estate's garden north of London.

Sounds expensive for a trumped-up lawn gnome — but the buyer actually got an epic deal. The true value of the reliefs, Brand told AFP, is "priceless."
"You can imagine how horrified they were to learn that their garden ornaments were in fact priceless stolen Spanish religious art," Brand said. "They got quite nervous, because these priceless 1,300-year-old artifacts that were made for the Spanish sun were in their garden, exposed to the English rain."
Following this revelation, the artifacts were safely returned to the Spanish embassy in London on Monday (Jan. 21), AFP reported. They will be restored to Spain's Santa Maria de Lara church, which was declared a national monument in 1929. The church was built more than 1,000 years ago by Visigoths— a Germanic culture that ruled much of France and the Iberian peninsula between the fifth and the eighth centuries — and is thought to be one of the oldest Catholic churches in Spain, the director of the nearby Burgos Museum told Spanish news site El Pais.
Brand has been nicknamed the "Indiana Jones of the art world" for his impressive track record of relocating stolen objects. Some of his notable finds include a 1,600-year-old mosaic stolen from a church in Cyprus when Turkey occupied the country in 1974 (and finally recovered from a family in Monaco in 2018), two bronze horse sculptures commissioned by Adolf Hitler during World War II, and numerous works stolen from Jewish families during the Holocaust.

Irish surgeon who staged burglary to claim £180k in ‘stolen art and jewels’ is found guilty – but wife cleared after saying she had no clue of family cash

Anthony McGrath, 46, claimed antiques, artwork and jewellery were stolen from his home in Hertfordshire

A LEADING surgeon has been found guilty of faking a burglary to make a £180,000 bogus insurance claim.

Anthony McGrath, 46, claimed antiques, artwork and jewellery were stolen in a break-in at his rented cottage.
The audacious scam even included a supposedly lost 19th century Rococo red marble fireplace.
But the orthopaedic surgeon's scheme was uncovered by police who spotted pictures he supplied of the items had been taken AFTER the break-in.
Officers raided his family's stately home in Ireland and found antique furniture, paintings, crystalware and jewellery he claimed were missing.
Luton Crown Court heard flashy McGrath had been renovating his new £1.1m home in St Albans, Herts, but his spending had 'run out of control'.

His debts had spiralled to more than £1million.
McGrath was found guilty of four counts of an insurance scam fraud, perverting the course of public justice, and three charges of mortgage fraud.

WIFE CLEARED OF ANY WRONGDOING

His GP wife Anne-Louise McGrath, 44, was cleared of any involvement following the four-month trial.
She had told the court that with young children to care for and an ailing mother she left much of the family’s financial affairs to her husband.
Three mortgage applications were submitted by Mr McGrath to Lloyds Bank between 2012 and 2015 supported by forged documentation in relation to his and his wife’s earnings.
Antiques were also among the 95 items he claimed were stolen A forged 'employment and income reference' purportedly sent from the HR department of a hospital in Southampton where McGrath was working during 2012 had inflated his earnings by nearly £10,000.
Before the scam, the surgeon had been trying to raise funds by selling off antiques

Group of Seven painting worth $200,000 stolen from Toronto home

Toronto police say the painting called “Sun Gleams: Autumn, North Saskatchewan” is an original piece of art by A.Y. Jackson.

TORONTO — Police say a Group of Seven painting has been stolen from a Toronto home.
Toronto police say the painting is an original piece of art by A.Y. Jackson and was stolen along with other items.

They say officers were called about the break-and-enter on Friday where the painting called "Sun Gleams: Autumn, North Saskatchewan" was reported missing.

Investigators say the painting is oil on canvas and is worth more than $200,000.
The Group of Seven consisted of painters best known for capturing Canadian landscapes in their work.

---

Stolen Art Watch, Beware The Ides Of March 2019

March 1, 2019, 12:31 pm

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Stolen Picasso Buy-Back, Arthur Brand & Dick Ellis Buying Back Stolen Art By Paying Drug Dealers, Arms Dealers, Organise Crime Godfather's, Potentially Terrorists

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Empty Frames Season Two Finale, Art Crime Snapshot Febuary 2019

$

0

0

Caravaggio painting worth £129 million was almost stolen by burglars

The 'Lost Caravaggio' which was discovered in the attic of a Toulouse farmhouse in 2014 is seen at a press conference in central London. (Jonathan Brady/PA Wire)

A long-lost painting by the artist Caravaggio was almost stolen by burglars years before it was rediscovered in an attic in Toulouse.

The work by the Italian master, found five years ago in a farmhouse in the French city, was unveiled on Thursday in London after being restored.
Burglars broke into the home and stole items including bottles of perfume but left the painting as they thought it worthless, according to auctioneer Marc Labarbe.
Titled Judith And Holofernes and valued at £129 million, the piece sat for a century in anonymity against a wall between old clothes, family antiques and crockery.
Speaking at the unveiling of the work at the Colnaghi gallery, Mr Labarbe joked the burglars had not deemed the painting "adequate" enough to steal it.
He said: "One of my clients was clearing his attic and he needed two men to help him. It took a year to sell all the antiquities.
"Clocks, toys, pieces of religion, in good and bad condition, clothes, crockery, as well as many things of no interest. Everything was very dusty.
"I have to tell you that a few years before, burglars broke into the attic and stole many things, included eau de parfum bottles.
"Fortunately, our painting was not adequate."
He added: "On the 23rd of April 2014, late in the morning, my client called me again because he had found a painting and wanted my opinion on it.
"I went to his house and climbed the stairs to the landing of the attic where the painting was displayed.
"At this moment there was what was like a fog across the whole canvas.
"The painting was blurry and it was almost impossible to see the details, but I was impressed by the state of the composition."
According to Paris-based art appraiser Eric Turquin, the work was painted in 1607.
It depicts the biblical tale of Judith, a widow from the city of Bethulia, who breaks the siege of her home by seducing the Assyrian leader and beheading him.
It will be sold without reserve on June 27 in Toulouse at the La Halle aux Grains, with Mr Labarbe saying: "This magnificent story began in Toulouse. It has to continue in Toulouse."
The painting is Caravaggio's second version of the same subject, with the first painted in Rome around 1600.
The discovery means there are now 68 known paintings attributed to the artist, who was born in 1571 and died in 1610 of suspected lead poisoning from his paint.
Judith And Holofernes will be on display at Colnaghi at 26 Bury Street from March 1 until March 9.

FBI Found Over 40,000 Stolen Artifacts, Including 2,000 Human Bones, In an Indiana Home

Over a period of 70 years, Donald Miller unearthed cultural artifacts from North America, South America, Asia, the Caribbean, and Indo-Pacific regions. Now, the FBI hopes to return the objects to their rightful origins.

We all have fun little hobbies: gardening, bowling, or, like one man in Waldron, Indiana, stealing other people’s culture, including the literal bones of their ancestors. Four years ago, the FBI found more than 40,000 individual relics and works of art in the home of Indiana “collector” Donald Miller, including pre-Columbian pottery, ancient weapons, and items in a case labeled “Chinese jewelry” dated to 500 BCE. The objects were arranged in a vast sort of home museum, and included specimens from around the globe — thousands of which were sourced in violation of antiquities laws and federal and state statutes. As reported by SF Gate, according to the FBI, Miller went on digs around the world and illegally brought his finds home to the United States.
But this Wunderkammer turned the corner into a wtfuckerkammer when the FBI raid revealed some 2,000 human skeletal remains amid Miller’s collection, revealing the man to be less a collector than a grave robber (though arguably the line gets blurry at times). It’s estimated the bones belong to 500 Arikara Native American individuals, stolen from burial sites primarily in North Dakota. Though the FBI first engaged with Miller in 2014, the grave-robber and antiquities hoarder passed away in 2015 at the age of 91, leaving the federal organization with a logistical nightmare, in terms of returning the purloined remains and objects to their rightful places of origin.
As reported this week on FBI News, the federal agency is now publicizing the case, along with an invitation-only website detailing the items, in the hopes of gaining further assistance from governments around the world and from Native American tribes to locate their rightful origins. Since, for some 70 years, Miller actively unearthed cultural artifacts from North America, South America, Asia, the Caribbean, and in Indo-Pacific regions such as Papua New Guinea, the number of affected parties is complex, and the disbanding of 7,000 items reclaimed by the FBI in 2014, as well as the human remains which triggered their investigation, is only now being realized.

“It was a very complex operation,” Special Agent Tim Carpenter, who oversees the FBI’s art theft program and who led the 2014 recovery effort in Indiana, is quoted as saying. “We are not treating this material as simply evidence. These objects are historically, culturally, and spiritually important, and you have to take that into consideration.” He added:

We are dealing in many cases with objects that are thousands of years old. So imagine a scenario where you take an artifact that was created 4,000 years ago, survived in the ground or a tomb, survived being looted, survived being transported to the United States, has been in this guy’s house for the last 60 years, and the FBI comes along and we pick it up and we stumble and we drop it and we break it. That’s a pretty bad day.

The mere physical delicacy of the objects in question fairly pales in comparison to the delicacy with which the FBI must trace the rightful provenance of these objects, which Miller liked to display to visiting school groups (though the human remains he kept largely to himself, and the occasional visiting serial killer who might be into that kind of thing). Miller was a renowned scientist who helped build the first atomic bomb, so presumably, his nightmares were haunted by many a restless spirit, and not just those he had disinterred to add to his collection.
As the affair inches towards its resolution, officials from China are due in Indianapolis this week to recover their relics, CBS reports. But the whole situation raises timely questions about the line between grave-robbing and archaeology. With the continuing struggle for people like the Rapa Nui of Easter Island to recover sacred artifacts taken by the British and held as cultural treasures, the Donald Miller case is a sobering object lesson in white entitlement to world culture, and the reluctance some have to return what they have taken. According to the FBI, Miller was compliant with their orders and expressed a desire to see the remains and stolen artifacts returned to their rightful place in the world — but the underlying issue seems to be the sense that it was ever okay to take them in the first place.

The World’s Most Prolific Art Thief Has Just Explained His Motivation

Tourists walk in the atelier of the Rubens house in Flanders, Belgium, an institution from which Stéphane Breitwieser stole an ivory statue. Mark Renders/Getty Images

Most of us sail through life always striving to be better, existing tepidly without definitive confirmation that we are (or ever were) at the peak of our profession. Master art thief Stéphane Breitwieser has a considerable amount of problems, but this is not one of them.
In a long profile published on Thursday at GQ and written by author Michael Finkel, Breitwieser explains, in his own words, just what exactly motivated him to pilfer more than a billion dollars’ worth of artwork in hundreds of museums over the course of an incredible tear of about six years. The saga also involved his mother and his girlfriend (the latter two did not contribute to the story and in fact have never spoken publicly about the infamous robberies).

Breitwieser has been imprisoned more than once for his crimes, and is currently once again incarcerated pending further investigation from French authorities, who say they’ve found “Roman coins and other objects” in his residence.
Finkel points out that what’s perhaps most staggering about Breitwieser is the “why” behind the unbelievable volume of his trophies, which were famously destroyed by his mother for reasons that are still unclear. The thief didn’t resell his items on the black market, or seek to trade what he’d obtained for better housing or travel.
He stashed everything in the house where he lived with his mom and his girlfriend, because all he really wanted to do was look at it. And the “why” behind this impulse of obsession seems so ripe for a cinematic adaptation, it’s practically tumescent. The thief’s father, you see, had abandoned the family when Breitwieser was 22 years old and taken every item of value with him, including a collection of antique weapons.

Stephane Breitwieser appearing on the French program ‘On n’est pas couché’ on October 7, 2006. On n'est pas couché/Youtube

The first thing Breitwieser ever stole from a museum was a hand-carved gun that was dated to 1730. “His first thought, he recalls, was that he should already own something like this,” Finkel writes.
Once off to the races as a thief, Breitwieser set about amassing a trove of Renaissance paintings, daggers and other artistic ephemera fit for a king, but perhaps his favorite acquisition was an ivory sculpture of Adam and Eve that had managed to survive his mother’s attempt to destroy it (she allegedly threw it in the Rhone-Rhine Canal). In 2018, Finkel returned with Breitwieser to visit the statue at the Reubens House Museum in Belgium, from which he had initially stolen it decades earlier.
The thief is overcome, and cries for what can never again be his. “Art has punished me,” he tells Finkel before pilfering a copy of the museum’s catalogue—evidently that keenly-felt discipline at the hand of creative expression hasn’t quite tamed his criminal impulse.

Stolen Art Watch, Stolen Picasso Buy-Back, Arthur Brand & Dick Ellis Buying Back Stolen Art By Paying Drug Dealers, Arms Dealers, Organise Crime Godfather's, Potentially Terrorists

March 31, 2019, 5:03 pm

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Arthur Brand, Dick Ellis, Michel Van Rijn, William Veres, Criminals, Sociopaths and Narcissists Them All !!

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Beware The Ides Of March 2019

$

0

0

Yet to be revealed in the recovery of the stolen Picasso is the breakdown of payments made to the Criminal Underworld and the intentions of the insurance company who own the Picasso, after paying the Saudi Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Abdulmalik al-Sheikh U.S. $4.5 million/$4,500,000 back in 1999 when it was stolen.

 Richard "Dick" Ellis above

Dick Ellis received his usual 10% of insurance payout, meaning Dick Ellis will get U.S. four hundred and fifty thousand dollars $450,000.00

 Arthur Brand above

Arthur Brand will also get 10% of insurance payout U.S. four hundred and fifty thousand dollars $450,000.00

 Octave Durham Van Gogh Thief above

Octave Durham, the convicted Van Gogh thief, who actually delivered the stolen Picasso to Arthur Brand and Dick Ellis got U.S. one hundred and fifty thousand dollars $150,000.00

Rob Van Meeson Frans Hals Thief above

Rob Van Meeson, Frans Hals Thief, is a sidekick of Octave Durham, who was also present when the Stolen Picasso was handed to Arthur Brand and Dick Ellis got U.S. one hundred and fifty thousand dollars $150,000.00

Arthur Van Der Biezen Organised Crime Godfather lawyer 

Represented by Lawyer Arthur Van der Biezen, The Organised Crime Godfather, who was the person holding the stolen Picasso got U.S. eight hundred thousand dollars $800,000.00

This means the outstanding bill for the insurance company is now U.S. $6,500,000.

The insurance company on the premise of the passage of time intends to try and seek a further U.S. $3.5 million $3,500,000 from the Saudi Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Abdulmalik al-Sheikhbefore they return his stolen Picasso to him.

Meaning the Saudi Sheikh has to pay the insurance company a total of $10 million to get his stolen Picasso back.

This may seem attractive given the stolen Picasso is now valued at $28 million, however, the Saudi Sheikh might take exception at the payments to criminal underworld thieves and Organised Crime Godfather, and feel the demands of the insurance company excessive.

Plan B is for the insurance company to claim full ownership and then sell the stolen Picasso at auction for somewhere between $20-£30 million, giving them a net profit of between $12 and $22 million.

Either of the above scenarios could see the Saudi  Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Abdulmalik al-Sheikh resorting to litigation and legal action.

It must also be remembered that another Picasso from the same year and only dated, not signed sold in 2015 for $68 million, see link:

https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/pablo-picasso-1881-1973-buste-de-femme-femme-5895969-details.aspx

Law Enforcement globally has raised their collective eyebrows at the actual recovery of the Stolen Picasso, a classic Buy-back of stolen art, without arrests or initial scrutiny, which will intensify if and when the actual payment amounts, and who exactly the payments went to, are revealed.

It is possible Arthur Brand could end up being regarded not as the Indiana Jones of the Art World, but as the 21^st century Jonathon Wild of the art world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild

How did we get here?

Recall Arthur Brand has made several high profile, high value art recoveries over the last few years, not least the Tamara De Lempicka, and Savador Dali which were also the subject of  stolen art Buy-backs from criminals.

 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-detective-arthur-brand-stolen-dutch-a7170401.html

In that case, once recovered, the Tamara De Lempicka was sold at auction for $9 million dollars and like with the stolen Picasso recently recovered, payments were made to criminals.

https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/tamara-de-lempicka-1898-1980-la-musicienne-6169487-details.aspx

Dick Ellis & Arthur Brand got 10% of sale price, $900,000 between them

Dick Ellis, as ever, got the Lion share.

Also, Arthur Brand recovered a Salvador Dali which sold see below link:

https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/salvador-dali-1904-1989-adolescence-6169468-details.aspx

Dick Ellis and Arthur Brand got 10% each for the Dali sale total $300,000

Arthur Brand used part of his share of the two above sales to pay some cash up front for the stolen Picasso, thereby allowing it to be released from the grip of the Organised Crime Godfather.

Once authenticated, the rest of the money for the stolen Picasso was paid to the two handlers, Octave Durham and Rob Van Meeson, and the Lawyer Arthur Van der Biezen representing the Organised Crime Godfather.

Dick Ellis history of buy back stolen art from criminals:

https://arthostage.blogspot.com/2016/04/stolen-art-watch-art-loss-registers.html
 
 https://arthostage.blogspot.com/2014/08/stolen-art-watch-foxes-guarding-hen.html

The mainstream media are playing catch up after the initial joy of the stolen Picasso being recovered, see links below:

 https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/picasso-stolen-painting-dora-maar-found-intl-scli/index.html

 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/mar/29/art-detective-arthur-brand-how-i-found-a-stolen-picasso-painting

Stolen Art Watch, Arthur Brand, Dick Ellis, Michel Van Rijn, William Veres, Criminals, Sociopaths and Narcissists Them All !!

April 21, 2019, 10:30 pm

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, May The Rule Of Law Prevail 2019

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Stolen Picasso Buy-Back, Arthur Brand & Dick Ellis Buying Back Stolen Art By Paying Drug Dealers, Arms Dealers, Organise Crime Godfather's, Potentially Terrorists

$

0

0

Art detective eyes IRA in Gardner art heist

By Casey Sherman 

 https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/04/22/art-detective-eyes-ira-in-gardner-art-heist/

April 22, 2019 at 12:01 am

A celebrated Dutch art detective vows to recover missing masterpieces stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and return them to their rightful home after nearly three decades.
Arthur Brand, dubbed “The Indiana Jones of the art world,” tells me that he’s spoken with sources in direct contact with what’s left of the IRA.
They have convinced him some of the missing paintings are stashed away in Ireland, and the reason that no one has come forward to claim the $10 million reward offered by the museum is that those now in possession of the art do not trust the FBI to simply let them walk away with a windfall of cash with no questions asked.
“Members of the IRA only trust their mothers. That’s about it, so there’s a high level of skepticism,” Brand told me in a telephone interview from his home in the Netherlands. “The IRA and the Irish mob have been known to hold art hostage and use it as collateral to get prisoners out of jail. It’s what they do best.”

Recently, Brand made international headlines for finding and returning a $28 million dollar Picasso that was stolen 20 years ago from a luxury yacht in the French Riviera.

https://arthostage.blogspot.com/2019/04/stolen-art-watch-stolen-picasso-buy.html

It was 29 years ago, in March 1990 that two thieves disguised as Boston police officers stole 13 art works from the Gardner museum including Vermeer’s “The Concert” and Rembrandt’s “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee.” According the museum, it’s the single largest property theft in the world. It’s also Boston’s most enduring crime mystery, now that Whitey Bulger’s been captured and was subsequently killed in prison.
Despite the potential IRA connection, the Irish mob boss had nothing to do with this one. Bulger’s protégé Kevin Weeks once told me that the gang wasn’t involved in the theft but shook every tree and beat down a few people in an effort to find the loot and cash in on it themselves.
Brand agrees that Bulger wasn’t the guy.
“At the time of the theft, the IRA was running guns from Boston to Ireland with and without Bulger’s knowledge,” Brand said. “The paintings were hidden on one of the vessels and they would remain in Ireland today.”
Brand’s theory isn’t shared by the FBI, which has gone to great lengths in its effort to recover the paintings. The feds launched a billboard campaign in 2014 to solicit the public’s help and have chased after a geriatric, wheelchair bound Connecticut gangster named Robert Gentile, who they have dubbed as a person of interest in the case.

The 82-year-old Gentile was released from his latest federal prison stretch last month, apparently without providing any information as to the whereabouts of the missing art.
“Gentile had every opportunity to cooperate with authorities and he has not,” Brand says. “That tells me the FBI is going after the wrong man.”

Some critics believe Brand is the wrong man for art enthusiasts to pin their hopes on. The art detective is not above getting his hands dirty and negotiating directly with underworld figures to recover stolen art. Naysayers claim Brand’s approach will encourage more art theft.  

But aren’t Brand’s methods one in the same with those of the Gardner Museum? 

The museum doubled its reward to $10 million for the safe return of the masterpieces, guaranteeing both confidentiality and anonymity to anyone who steps forward.

If that person is eventually Arthur Brand, you can bet it won’t be anonymous. 

The art sleuth, who once recovered two missing bronze horses sculpted for Adolf Hitler, has cultivated a persona of derring do, using false identities to cozy up with hardened criminals who have led him to stolen art.

“Those who are hiding the Gardner paintings and are still distrustful of American law enforcement can contact me and I would be more than happy to return this world heritage to Boston,” Brand says.
The Boston office of the FBI will not comment on Brand’s theories, but encourage anyone who is knowingly in possession of the stolen artwork to return it to the museum and collect the $10 million reward.
Casey Sherman is the author of 10 books including “12: The Inside Story of Tom Brady’s Fight for Redemption.” Follow him on Twitter @caseysherman123

Art Hostage comments:
Personally, I wish Arthur Brand all the luck in the worldin recovering the stolen Gardner art, however, I reserve my right to question the ethics, morality and legality of the other stolen art recoveries Arthur Brand and his criminal gang have made and continue to make.

I am sure the Irish Republican movement, IRA old and new, will not welcome the accusations from Arthur Brand, that they have the stolen Gardner art stashed away until they get paid the $10 million reward.
more to follow..................

Stolen Art Watch, May The Rule Of Law Prevail 2019

May 1, 2019, 7:29 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Empty Frames Season Two Begins, From De Kooning To Da Vinci

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, Arthur Brand, Dick Ellis, Michel Van Rijn, William Veres, Criminals, Sociopaths and Narcissists Them All !!

$

0

0

17th-Century Bible Stolen From Pittsburgh Library Recovered in the Netherlands

The 404-year-old religious text was one of more than 300 artifacts stolen from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library over a two-decade period

In April 2017, a routine insurance appraisal of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s rare book collection revealed 321 missing items, including atlases, maps, plate books, photograph albums and manuscripts valued by experts at around $8 million. Since the news broke, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been on the case, recovering fragments and intact volumes worth an estimated $1.6 million. Last week, a 1615 Geneva Bible similar to one brought from Europe by Pilgrims traveling aboard the Mayflower joined the collection of rediscovered tomes.

According to CNN’s Lauren M. Johnson, authorities found the 404-year-old Bible in the possession of Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, director of the Netherlands’ Leiden American Pilgrim Museum. As Bangs tells Johnson, he purchased the volume from a seemingly “reputable dealer in antiquarian books” for inclusion in an upcoming exhibition on texts owned by members of Plymouth Colony. During a news conference, district attorney spokesperson Mike Manko said that Bangs paid $1,200 for the Bible, now valued at closer to $5,500, in 2015.
“From a dollar-figure sense, [the Bible] is not priceless,” FBI agent Robert Jones said at the conference. “[But] from a history perspective, it is priceless.”
Known as a “Breeches Bible” for its inclusion of the term in the Genesis’ description of Adam and Eve sewing fig leaf clothes to cover their nakedness, the text was translated by English Protestants who fled to Geneva during the reign of Catholic Queen Mary I.

Pennsylvania investigators first alerted Bangs to the Bible's questionable provenance in 2018. After studying the case alongside Dutch police, he agreed to yield the artifact to an expert tasked with bringing it to the country's American Embassy.
The F.B.I.’s Art Crime Team took over from there, The New York Times’ Karen Zraick reports, safely transporting the Bible to the agency’s Pittsburgh offices. As District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. tells the Associated Press’ Ramesh Santanam, the F.B.I. will give the recovered manuscript to Allegheny County prosecutors who will, in turn, return the book to its rightful home at the Carnegie Library.
Last year, prosecutors charged library archivist Gregory Priore with allegedly smuggling hundreds of artifacts to local book dealer John Schulman, who then re-sold them to unsuspecting clients. Priore was the sole archivist in charge of the library’s rare book room from 1992 until his firing in June 2017. According to Shelly Bradbury of thePittsburgh Post-Gazette, authorities believe Priore and Schulman, a once-respected member of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America who formerly led the organization’s ethics committee, conspired to sell cannibalized and intact texts, many of which the archivist simply carried out of the library and into the bookseller’s shop, since the late 1990s.

A Stolen Painting by Signac, Worth More Than $1 Million, Is Recovered in Ukraine

Officials are investigating whether the same gang suspected of stealing the painting by Paul Signac could been involved in further art crimes.

Ukrainian police have recovered an oil painting by the French Pointillist painter Paul Signac that was stolen from a French museum last year. The 1915 painting, which is valued at €1.5 million ($1.68 million), was cut from its frame during a theft at the Museum of Fine Arts in the northeastern city of Nancy in France last May.
Police discovered the painting Signac’s La Rochelle, which depicts boats entering the French port, in the Kiev home of a Ukrainian man who is wanted on suspicion of murdering a jeweler. All suspects related to the theft have been detained, according to a report in AFP. Officials confirmed that several other works of art have been discovered.
Signac’s painting will be returned to the museum in France at the end of the investigation, according to Ukraine’s interior minister Arsen Avakov. He unveiled the recovered work of art accompanied by the French ambassador to Kiev, Isabelle Dumont.
“We received information about a group of people looking for buyers for paintings stolen in Europe last year,” said police official Sergiy Tykhonov according to Le Monde.
A video presented by the police at the event in Kiev on April 23 shows the alleged thief confessing that the work was “stolen only because it was very simple,” Monopol reports. In the video, the suspect also advised France to check its museum security measures.
Ukrainian officials said they are working with Austrian authorities to investigate whether the same gang was involved in the theft in Vienna of a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. artnet News reached out to the Dorotheum to confirm if it is the landscape study by Renoir that was stolen from the auction house last fall but they replied that they “don’t know anything about it.”

Professional burglar Daniel Locke jailed after targetting antiques at Victoria Road, Kingsdown

A “professional burglar” who swiped Corinthian-style silver candlesticks and expensive antiques from a woman’s home has been jailed.
Daniel Locke, 19, was traced after leaving a blood stain after raiding a home in Victoria Road, Kingsdown, near Deal.
Judge James O'Mahony said the silverware and other items, costing to the tune of £5,000, were targeted because they could “easily be knocked out on the black market.”
He said: “This was a professional burglary where they knew what they were taking.
“You chose a rural place thus reduced the risk of detection.
“The items were undoubtedly much loved by the owner no doubt collected over the years.
“It was stuff that you could easily be knocked out on the black market.
“Taking all of this into account this offence is so serious that immediate custody is inevitable.”
Locke, of Jennifer Gardens in Margate, became visibly upset during prosecutor Ian Foinette’s summing up.
The barrister told Canterbury Crown Court on Tuesday how a neighbour alerted police after a routine check on the detached bungalow.
“(The neighbour) saw a curtain flapping about in the breeze.
“They found out it had been ransacked and saw various items spread across the premises.
“Police were called and the owner turned up.
“The crime team noticed a red mark on a chest of drawers in the bedroom.
“When it was swabbed it came back as matching the defendant’s DNA,” he said.
Among the items taken were Corinthian style silver candlesticks, a solid silver tray and art deco solid silver coffee pot.
A large silver soup ladle, small spoons, napkin rings, silver cruet set, coin collection and antique ivory elephant were also swiped.

"Not only did Locke violate the victim’s privacy, he caused significant damage to their property and stole items of sentimental value..." - DC Andrew Dale

Mitigating, Locke’s barrister argued her client was an immature 17-year-old at the time of the offence in December 2017 and he pleaded guilty at the first opportunity.
She added a brain injury following a hit and run in 2016 contributed to Locke’s impulsiveness and anger.
However no official evidence of the injury was presented to the court.
Locke’s previous history included theft, three counts of burglary and handling stolen goods, the court heard.
He was handed a 27-month prison sentence to be served at a Young Offender Institution.
Investigating Officer Detective Constable Andrew Dale said: "Burglary can have such a detrimental impact on people’s lives.
"Not only did Locke violate the victim’s privacy, he caused significant damage to their property and stole items of sentimental value.
"I hope his sentence sends a message to other criminals and helps to act as a deterrent to those who may be considering this type of criminality."

Art forger Eric Hebborn linked to mafia boss, film-makers say

Rights to memoir of artist who died in 1996 secured for ambitious TV drama

Dalya Alberge

Film-makers have unearthed evidence that Eric Hebborn, the greatest art forger of modern times, was working for the mafia towards the end of his life and may even have been murdered by them.
The British artist’s death has remained a mystery since 1996, when he was found with a fractured skull on a street near his home in Rome. He was 61 .
Writers Kingston Trinder and Peter Gerard have secured the rights to Hebborn’s memoir from 1991, Drawn to Trouble, and are planning an ambitious eight-part TV drama about the art forger.
They have been collaborating with some of the forger’s closest friends, who have never spoken publicly about him before and who have revealed details of Hebborn’s “mafia-related” dealings.

Their accounts suggest that he was creating his “old masters” for the mafia after he was outed as a forger in 1978, and that he became so desperate for money that his sources were “increasingly questionable”.

Advertisement

Trinder told the Observer: “We think a mafia connection may ultimately have played a role in Eric’s death. We’ve been hearing a lot of suspicions about what was going on in the circumstances leading up to it.”
Gerard added that Hebborn had been “fearful of a certain violent dealer” and that he confided to friends he feared “something violent” would happen to him.
The film-makers were astonished to discovered that immediately after Hebborn’s death, his flat was ransacked. They believe there is a link with the threats he received, and that someone needed to destroy incriminating evidence.
They were also surprised to learn that there was never a police investigation into Hebborn’s death.
In his memoir, Hebborn made a passing reference to a portrait for “a mafia boss”, writing that he produced “preliminary studies closely watched by four silk-suited gunmen”.
Hebborn humiliated the art world, deceiving galleries and auction houses with his forgeries in the style of masters such as Rubens and Van Dyck. He claimed to have passed off about 1,000 forgeries as the real thing.
“Only a handful have been exposed,” according to Christopher Wright, a leading art historian, who said last month that he believes a 15th-century painting in the National Gallery is by Hebborn.
The reasons for Hebborn’s death remain a mystery. Gerard, however, said: “We believe that he was murdered. A lot of people wanted to keep him quiet.”
He added that one of Hebborn’s closest friends has given the film-makers the name and photograph of someone believed to have been responsible.
“That particular person does have a mafia relationship. We’re hesitant to name names. There are names we’re going to have to change in our production. Nobody’s discouraged us from filming this story.”

4 of 6 individuals, believed to be tied to a Pink Panther operating cell, head to trail in the jewel heist at the Doge's Palace in Venice.

http://art-crime.blogspot.com/2019/04/4-of-6-heading-to-trail-in-jewel-theft.html

Following up on the museum jewel heist which occurred during the "Treasures of Mughals and Maharajas" exhibition at the Doge's Palace in Venice in January 2018.   

On January 3, 2018 jewelry worth an estimated €2m (£1.7m) was stolen from a display case at the museum palace of the Doge of Venice during a brazen, broad daylight, robbery which occurred shortly after ten in the morning on the last day of the exhibition. Taken during the theft were a pair of pear-shaped 30.2-carat diamond earrings in a platinum setting along with an equally weighty 10 carat, grade D diamond and ruby pendant brooch.  Both items belonged to His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al-Thani, a member of the Qatari royal family, who is the first cousin of the current emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.  

According to a report first published on Twitter by Mediaset Journalist Clemente Mimun, the Italian authorities had long suspected that the thieves behind the museum theft might have had inside help and were likely part of a criminal network made up of associates from the former Yugoslavia, sometimes referred to as "the Pink Panthers".  This network, working in small yet coordinated cells, are believed to be responsible for some 200+ robberies spanning 35 countries over the last two decades.  Some thefts, like that at the Doge's palace, have been discreet, 60-second affairs.  Others have been armed robberies or have involved automobiles being rammed into glass storefronts.  In total the thieves are believed to have made off with an estimated €500 million in jewels and gemstones, much of which has never been recovered.

But everyone knows that good police work sometimes requires patience. 

Following months of investigations by the mobile squad of the Venice Police Headquarters and the  Central Operational Service of the Central Anti-crime Directorate of the State Police, working alongside prosecutor Raffaele Incardona, six suspects were ultimately identified by the Italian authorities. Between November 7 and November 8, 2018 five of these men, including four Croatians and one Serb, were taken into custody in Croatia in a coordinated action involving Police Directorates in Zagreb and Istra based upon European arrest warrants issued for the suspect's related to their alleged involvement in the Venice museum theft. 

Five of those named by Italian authorities are believed to have visited the Doge's Palace in Venice on two test-run occasions prior to the actual theft.  Their first visit occurred on December 30, 2018 and their second on the day before the robbery.   Each time the team apparently tried to steal jewelry from the exhibition without success or were practicing in advance of the final event. 

Vinko Tomic

The brains behind the heist is purported to be 60-year-old Vinko Tomic, who goes by several other names, including Vinko Osmakčić and Juro Markelic.  No stranger to crime Tomic has already been connected with other million dollar hits.  Tomic has been implicated in the thefts of $1m worth of diamond watches in Honolulu, the heist of the $1m Millennium Necklace in Las Vegas, the filching of three rings, collectively worth £2m in London, and other high value jewel heists in Hong Kong, Monaco and Switzerland.  

When appearing in court in connection with one prior offense, Tomic made a statement to the presiding judge that he was a war veteran originally from the area of Bosnia and Herzegovina who was wounded in battle in 1995 and who fled, first to Croatia and later to Germany.  There,  unable to find work, he stated he eventually turned to a life of crime, though he managed to provide for his family and put his brother through school. 

For Italian law enforcement their biggest break in the case came as a result of a slip up on the part of the gang's leader.  According to chief prosecutor Bruno Cherchi, the Venice police chief Danilo Gagliardi, and Alessandro Giuliano, director of the Central Operational Service of the Central Anti-crime Directorate of the State Police, who spoke at a press conference on the investigation, officers identified a Facebook photo of Tomic wearing an identical ring to the one he was wearing when captured on CCTV footage at the Doge's Palace in Venice. 

Tomic's alleged accomplices to the Venice jewel theft are listed here:

Zvonko Grgić

Zvonko Grgić (age 43) whose now static Facebook profile lists him as an armed security contractor available for global security around the world. 

Želimir Grbavac

Želimir Grbavac, (age 48), who, according to Croatian news sources appears to have lived a discreet existence, operating an electrician business. 

Vladimir Đurkin (age 48), also Croatian.

and two Serbs, Dragan Mladenović (age 54) and Goran Perović (age 48).

Tomic, Grgić, and Grbavac were arrested on Wednesday, November 7, 2018 in Zagreb, while Đurkin was brought in for questioning in Istria. Mladenović was initially apprehended near the Serb-Croatian border and detained in Croatian police custody, only to escape while in police custody via a bathroom window on November 8, 2018.  How this happened while he was in police custody has been subject to controversy. 

On the basis of their European arrest warrants, three of the Croatians, Tomic, Grgić, and Grbavac were quickly transferred to Italy to stand trial. 

A month and a half after their arrest in Croatia, on December 23, 2019 Tomic, Grgić, and Grbavac made their initial appearance in Italian court before preliminary investigations judge David Calabria and maintained their right to remain silent.  Vinko Tomic was represented by lawyers Guido Simonetti and Simone Zancani.  Zvonko Grgić was represented by lawyer Marina Ottaviani and Želimir Grbavac was represented by lawyer Mariarosa Cozza.  

Fighting his extradition, Vladimir Đurkin was finally transferred to the Italian authorities on February 8, 2019.  The presiding judge has ruled that all four defendants will remain in custody at the prison of Santa Maria Maggiore in Venice pending the outcome of their upcoming trial. 

Serbian Dragan Mladenović and the final identified accomplice, Goran Perović, are believed to be in Serbia where they are untouchable by a European Arrest Warrant, a Convention which governs extradition requests between the 28 member states that make up the European Union (EU).  With no agreement between Italy and Serbia on judicial cooperation, there seems little chance that these two remaining accomplices will be extradited to Italy to stand trial.

And His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al-Thani's jewels? 

International insurers Lloyd's of London has indemnified the Al Thani Foundation, as the owner of the stolen brooch and earrings and has payed out a claim of 8 million and 250 thousand dollars making the firm the owners of the jewellery, should they be recovered.  As a result the insurers will likely become a civil party in the future trial of the alleged perpetrators.

Unfortunately the "Treasures of Mughals and Maharajas" have never been found. 

By:  Lynda Albertson

Stolen Art Watch, Empty Frames Season Two Begins, From De Kooning To Da Vinci

June 11, 2019, 3:43 am

≫ Next: Stolen Art Watch, Bulmer Art Heist According To Journalist Michael Gillard From Bristol Cable

≪ Previous: Stolen Art Watch, May The Rule Of Law Prevail 2019

$

0

0

Empty Frames Season 1 & 2 below:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb4xoWHxXY1fWrK93A84zkg