------------------------------------------------------
Richard Hannay : I know what it is to feel
lonely and helpless
and to have the whole world
against me, and those
are things that
no men or women ought to feel.
------------------------------------------------------
Picasso missing
from Paris museum
http://www.interpol.com/public/Data/WorkOfArt/Items/Data/1029/1029791.asp <<The
Pompidou Centre was restoring the painting before it went on loan
A Pablo
Picasso painting valued at $3m has apparently been stolen from a
workshop
belonging to the Pompidou Centre in Paris, French police say.
Nature morte a la charlotte, a small Cubist work
completed in 1924,
was last seen in a restoration studio at the workshop on 12 January.
It was found to be missing on Friday. "They have searched high and
low,
and now the Pompidou Centre thinks it must have been stolen," a
police
officer told the AFP news agency. "That is certainly the theory we
are
working under," he added. The still life in shades of brown and blue
was
being restored before going on loan to a museum in northern
France.>>
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1430_A_1305671_1_A,00.html <<Officials
have revealed that two masterpieces by Norwegian artist
Edvard Munch which
were snatched from an Oslo museum [on August 22,
2004] were not insured
against theft. "The pictures were insured in case
of fire or damage from
water, but not for theft or burglary," said John
Oeyaas of Oslo Forsikring,
which is responsible for insuring the
assets of the city of Oslo. "They are irreplaceable works and
it makes no sense to insure them against theft," he
said.>>
------------------------------------------------------
THEFT
OF Da Vinci painting Madonna with the Yardwinder FROM DRUMLANRIG
CASTLE, [on
August 27, 2003].
<<This wonderful work of art was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle on
27th
August 2003 after being in the possession of the Buccleuch family
for
more than 200 years and admired by the many thousands of visitors
who
visit the Castle every year. Painted between 1500 and 1510 for
Florimand
Robertet, Secretary of State for Louis XII of France. An eye
witness
account of Leonardo painting this subject, symbolising the Passion
of
Christ with the infant Jesus clinging to the cross-shaped
YARNwinder,
still survives. For a long time
this painting was thought to have been
lost somewhere in France and, after
occasional doubts about its
authenticity, the great authority, Kenneth Clark
(later Lord Clark), in
his later years, came to regard the figures and the
foreground rocks as
being Leonardo's own work, thereby reinforcing the
opinion of other
experts, notably Cecil Gould, Director of the National
Gallery.>>
------------------------------------------------------
Extracts
from the Sunday Times, regarding the recently-stolen Leonardo:
http://www.cronaca.com/archives/001378.html
<<Professor Martin Kemp of Oxford University, yesterday revealed that
he
has changed his mind about the painting and has elevated it from
the
status of a disputed "studio product" to "prime original". . .
Kemp's
change of mind has come with x-ray analyses made since 1992 and
research
which, he said in Oxford yesterday, "is beginning to rewrite
what
Leonardo's career looked like". He now "co-dates" the Madonna with
the
YARNwinder with the Mona Lisa
at about 1501-03 and dismisses the
received line that it is one of two copies
of a lost original. . .The
duke's painting had, according to Kemp in 1981,
been defined in a letter
of 1507 by Fra Pietro of Novellara as one of two
panels "by assistants
with occasional touches by the master himself". The
"original" painting,
Kemp concluded, had simply gone missing. What has
changed this verdict
is the intervention of science - of x-ray and infrared
spectography in
particular - in the 11 years since Kemp exhibited the duke's
Madonna,
the New York Madonna and three 16th- century copies in Edinburgh.
"We have finally got beyond Stone Age equipment," Kemp
explained
yesterday. "What came to light in both the Buccleuch and the New
York
pictures was an extensive, crowded underdrawing, at some variance
with what is seen on the surface. There is a rustic group of figures
- a Joseph leaning over the Madonna's right shoulder,
the Christ child and a woman who may be another Mary. . .
"My judgment now is that much more of the surface of both the
Buccleuch
and the New York pictures is by Leonardo than I thought. The
majority
of the virgin and child in the Buccleuch picture is autograph
(by
Leonardo). So are the foreground rocks. The rest of the picture is not."
Kemp was particularly admiring of the Madonna's head and the torso
of
the Christ child - "very nicely painted" - and of Christ's eyes,
"done
with extraordinary intelligence and rhythm and with that
liquid
intensity", which betrayed Leonardo's own hand. . . So which Madonna
was
started first? "I would say the Buccleuch," declared Kemp. "It has to
it
the feel (of Leonardo in Milan) in the 1490s with its strongly
blended
and rather svelte surfaces. It was started around 1501, not
evidently
finished before 1507; it would co-date much of the work on
the
Mona Lisa of around 1503. But Leonardo is fantastically difficult
to date. Many of his pictures took him 10 years to finish."
------------------------------------------------------
<<Though
Hitchcock made the original version of John (Lord Tweedsmuir)
Buchan's famous
book The Thirty Nine steps in 1935, a later version,
released in 1978 and
starring Robert Powell, was filmed on location at
Castlemilk House, Durisdeer
& Drumlanrig Castle. Drumlanrig Castle
was built & designed for the 17th Duke of Queensberry. Drumlanrig
has been the property of the Dukes of Buccleuch since
1810.>>
John Buchan's spy thriller The Thirty Nine Steps was published in
1915.
Buchan was one of Hitchcock's favorite writers and many consider
The
Thirty-nine Steps Hitchcock's best British film. However, Graham
Greene
considered the story 'inexcusably spoilt' by the director. The
film
begins with the assassination of a secret agent. The hero,
Richard
Hannay (Robert Donat), bumps into a beautiful woman who calls
herself
'Miss Smith'. She asks Hannay if he has ever heard of 'the 39
Steps',
and claims she must go to Scotland the next day to stop some
vital
secrets falling into enemy hands. Miss Smith is murdered and
Hannay
becomes the prime suspect for her murder. - Hannay is hunted by
the
police and captured. He manages to escape, and continues his run with
a
blonde, Pamela (Madeleine Carroll). In the end the secret of the
39
Steps is revealed - it is an organization of spies
collecting
information on behalf of a foreign government. Hannay spends a
good
portion of the film handcuffed to Pamela, which has been interpreted
as
Hitchcock's bondage fantasy or a criticism of the institution
of
marriage. The Thirty-nine Steps was remade with Keith More as
Hannay in 1956 and in 1978 by Don Sharp, starring Robert
Powell.
Robert Donat ....
Richard Hannay/Mr. Hammond/Capt.
Fraser/Henry Hopkinson
Madeleine Carroll .... Pamela/Mrs. Henry
Hopkinson
Richard Hannay : There are 20 million women in this island and I get
to
be chained to you.
Annabella Smith : Have you ever heard of the 39 Steps?
Richard Hannay :
No. What's that, a pub?
[trying to quiet the brawling audience]
Music hall announcer :
Gentlemen, please! You're not at home!
[A flock of sheep block the road as the car screeches to a halt]
Richard Hannay : Hello, what are we stopping for? Oh it's a whole
flock
of detectives.
[Screaming out to Mr. Memory at the Music Hall]
Richard Hannay : What
are The 39 Steps?
Mr. Memory : Am I Right Sir?
Mr. Memory : The 39 Steps is an organization of spies
collecting information on behalf of the foreign office of...
[interrupted by gunshot, collapses]
-----------------------------------------------------
Spenser dedication in Fairie Queene
(1590):
------------------------------------------------------
To the right Honourable the Earle of
Oxenford,
Lord high Chamberlayne of
England. &c.
Defended from foule *ENUIES* poisnous bit.
(W)hich so to doe may thee right well
befit,
(S)ith th'antique glory of thine auncestry
*Vnder a shady VELE is therein writ*
,
And eke thine owne long *liuing MEMORY*
,
Succeeding them in TRUE nobility: --
E.S.
----------------------------------------------------
John Buchan
(1875-1940). The Thirty-nine Steps. 1915.
http://www.bartleby.com/149/ <<I
RETURNED from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon
pretty well
disgusted with life. 'Richard Hannay,' I kept telling
myself, 'you have got
into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had
better climb out.' My father had
brought me out from Scotland at the age
of six, and I had never been home
since; so England was a sort of
Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on
stopping there for the rest
of my days.
I realised that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and
that
there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew
I was dead they would go to sleep again.
For miles I ran alongside a park wall, and in a break of the trees I
saw
a great castle. I swung through little old thatched villages, and
over
peaceful lowland streams, and past gardens blazing with hawthorn
and
yellow laburnum.
'But it's madness,' broke in General Winstanley. 'Do you mean to
tell
me that that man came here and sat beside me for the best part of
half
an hour and that I didn't detect the imposture? Alloa must be out of
his
mind.'
'Don't you see the cleverness of it?' I
said. 'You were too interested
in other things to have any eyes. You took
Lord Alloa for granted. If it
had been anybody else you might have looked
more closely, but it was
natural for him to be here, and that put you all to
sleep.'
Then the Frenchman spoke, very slowly and in good
English.
'The young man is right. His psychology is good.
Our enemies have not been foolish!'
He bent
his wise brows on the assembly.
'I will tell you
something,' he said. 'It happened many years ago in
Senegal. I was quartered
in a remote station, and to pass the time used
to go fishing for big barbel
in the river. A little Arab mare used to
carry my luncheon basket-one of the
salted dun breed you got at
Timbuctoo in the old days. Well, one morning I
had good sport, and the
mare was unaccountably restless. I could hear her
whinnying and
squealing and stamping her feet, and I kept soothing her with
my voice
while my mind was intent on fish. I could see her all the time, as
I
thought, out of a corner of my eye, tethered to a tree twenty
yards
away.... After a couple of hours I began to think of food. I
collected
my fish in a tarpaulin bag, and moved down the stream towards the
mare,
trolling my line. When I got up to her I flung the tarpaulin on her
back.'
He paused and looked round.
'It was the smell that gave me warning. I turned my head and found
myself
looking at a lion three feet off.... An old man-eater, that was
the terror of
the village.... What was left of the mare, a mass of blood
and bones and
hide, was behind him.' 10
'What happened?' I asked. I was enough of a
hunter
to know a TRUE YARN when I heard it.
'I
stuffed my fishing-rod into his jaws, and I had a pistol. Also my
servants
came presently with rifles. But he left his mark on me.'
He held up a hand which lacked three fingers.
'Consider,' he said. 'The mare had been dead more than an hour, and
the brute
had been patiently watching me ever since. I never saw the
kill, for I was
accustomed to the mare's fretting, and I never marked
her absence, for my
consciousness of her was only of something tawny,
and the lion filled that
part. If I could blunder thus, gentlemen,
in a land where men's senses are keen, why should
we busy preoccupied urban folk not err also?'
Then suddenly I had an inspiration.
'Where is
Scudder's book?' I cried to Sir Walter.
'Quick, man, I remember something in it.'
He unlocked the door of a bureau and gave it to me.
I found the place. 'Thirty-nine steps,' I read, and
again,
'Thirty-nine steps-I counted them-High tide, 10.17 p.m.'
The
Admiralty man was looking at me as if he thought I had gone mad.
'Don't you see it's a clue,' I shouted. 'Scudder knew where
these
fellows laired-he knew where they were going to leave the
country,
though he kept the name to himself. Tomorrow was the day,
and it was some place where high tide was at 10.17.'
I took my head in my hands and thought. There must be some way
of
reading this riddle. What did Scudder mean by steps? I thought of
dock
steps, but if he had meant that I didn't think he would have
mentioned
the number. It must be some place where there were several
staircases,
and one marked out from the others by having thirty-nine
steps.
'Here's the most I can make of it,' I said. 'We have got to find
a
place where there are several staircases down to the beach, one of
which has thirty-nine steps. I think it's a piece of open coast with
biggish
cliffs, somewhere between the Wash and the Channel.
Also it's a place where full tide is at 10.17 tomorrow night.'
He thought for a bit. 'What kind of steps do you mean, sir? There
are
plenty of places with roads cut down through the cliffs, and most
roads
have a step or two in them. Or do you mean regular staircases-all
steps,
so to speak?'
'If one of those staircases has thirty-nine steps
<<WHEN Leonardo da Vinci's famed Madonna with the YARNwinder was
snatched from Drumlanrig Castle
on a sunny afternoon last August, it was
assumed professional thieves had
stolen the oil painting to order, for a
wealthy collector. Yet a year on, The
Scotsman can reveal that police
believe the 16th century masterpiece was
actually taken by opportunist
thieves who may still have it stored in a
garage - because they have no
idea what to do with it. Detectives from
Dumfries and Galloway Police
insisted that, contrary to reports, the inquiry
had not been closed and
they expected to recover the painting and return it
to the Duke of
Buccleuch's collection. A £1 million reward is still on offer,
to be
paid by the painting's insurers.
One senior officer said: "The nature of this crime and the way it
was
carried out smacks of luck and opportunism. Even the use of the
stolen
getaway vehicle seems naive. If, as we suspect, the thieves
are
amateurs, we strongly believe they still have the painting in
their
hands, most likely stored in one of their homes or even a
lock-up.
Stealing a renowned work of art worth millions of pounds is one
thing,
but having the contacts and knowing how to sell it or export it on
the
black market is another thing altogether. "The feeling we are
getting
from this is that the perpetrators of this crime are probably at a
dead
end - they don't know what to do with the painting." The work, valued
at
anything up to £70 million, was part of a Drumlanrig collection
which
also includes a Rembrandt and a Holbein - but only the da Vinci
was
taken.
Police sources say the evidence supporting the amateurs theory
remains
overwhelming. CCTV footage from the castle showed the thieves,
both
wearing baseball caps, joining a tour of Drumlanrig until they came
to
the staircase hall where the painting was on display. At around
11am,
out of shot of the castle's CCTV cameras, they overpowered a
female
guide, disabled the alarm system, took the painting from a wall
and
escaped through a kitchen window. Then they walked from the
castle
towards their getaway vehicle - one of them with the masterpiece
tucked
under his arm. Police believe the men escaped, in the car with
two
accomplices, along single track roads in the castle grounds
before
abandoning the vehicle in a wood. They then transferred to a 2nd
car,
a dark green Rover, found 20 miles away.
For the Duke of Buccleuch, whose health has been poor for the past
two
years, the theft ended his family's 250-year relationship with
the
renaissance work, deemed so precious by his father that he used to
put
it in the boot of his car and take it with him when he moved between
his
three homes. The duke's son, the Earl of Dalkeith, said the whole
family
had been shocked and dismayed by the loss of the painting. He
added:
"It is a work of great serenity and beauty. I have no idea of its
open
market value but the monetary value is not the point. It has given
great
pleasure to a family and been available to the public in their tens
of
thousands. Its loss is impossible to quantify." Despite personal
appeals
by the duke himself, the extensive police hunt, which included a
BBC
Crimewatch appeal, has failed to turn up any significant breakthrough.
Theories that the painting was stolen by a travelling family linked
to
thefts from stately homes in England, or by Ulster terrorist
groups,
have been discounted. Experts are deeply sceptical of
suggestions
the masterpiece was stolen to order.
Ossian Ward, of Art Review magazine, supports the opportunist theory
and
believes the work would simply be impossible to sell. He said: "There
is
a serious myth bandied about 'theft to order', but I am not sure
how
realistic it is. There is no way of selling a da Vinci work like this
on
the open market. There is no market for works that are famous when
they
are famously stolen. Everyone in the market will know about it and
I
can't imagine what kind of collector would want to hang this work up
in
his front room. The thieves would be unlikely to have the
necessary
contacts to move the work on."
Michael Bury, senior lecturer in the School of Arts at
Edinburgh
University said: "Some works turn up many years after they are
stolen,
but sadly a large number are destroyed because they might be
too
revealing as evidence, once the thieves have realised that what
they
have is just too hot to sell on. Panic can easily set in, I imagine,
and
lead to unpredictable results."
Recent figures unveiled as part of a survey for the Council of
Art
Thefts show that 97 per cent of all stolen art work remains
with
criminals - yet art crime remains the third most profitable
illegitimate
enterprise in the world after arms and drugs sales. Every year
more than
10,000 works are reported stolen around the world. The FBI
estimates
the market in such stolen items is worth around £5 billion. The art
loss
register in London currently has a database of around 126,000
missing
works, including paintings by Rembrandt, Renoir and Cezanne, yet
the
Earl of Dalkeith believes the work will be returned to his family.
He
said: "Deep down I believe that it may be a matter of time, but one
day
she will be back at
Drumlanrig.">>
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=132&fArticleId=2197837
_Paintings a major crime_ target August 24, 2004
Oslo - Thieves are increasingly targeting famous paintings. The Art
Loss
Register estimates that $5,5-billion (about R36-billion) in stolen
art
has disappeared into criminal hands worldwide over the past
century.
In fact, Interpol rates art theft as the fourth-largest
criminal
activity after drugs, money laundering and arms smuggling.
Recent and highly publicised thefts involving unrecovered works are:
July 31 - In Rome, 10 paintings worth $5-million were stolen from
a
hospital's unguarded restoration room.
May 19 - In Paris, the Pompidou Centre reported that Picasso's
Nature morte a la charlotte,
worth $3-million, had disappeared
from a restoration studio.
December 16 2003 - Special 21 (Palo Duro Canyon) by Georgia O'Keeffe
was
stolen from the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fé. Valued
in
excess of $500 000.
August 27 2003 - In Scotland, thieves posing as tourists overpowered
the lone guide in Drumlanrig Castle and stole Leonardo da
Vinci's
Madonna with the YARNwinder, valued at about $60-million.
July 20 2002 - In Paraguay, thieves tunnelled into
the National Fine Arts Museum and stole a dozen paintings.
July 17 2001 - In Germany, an Andy Warhol portrait of Lenin
disappeared
from a Cologne warehouse. It had just been sold to a Munich
gallery for
about $700 000.
December 22 2000 - In Stockholm, three men snatched two Renoirs and
a Rembrandt from Sweden's National Museum, escaping by
speedboat.
------------------------------------------------
MISSING
MASTERPIECES
#THE Crucifixion, by Salvador Dali. Worth about £150,000, it was a
gift
to the inmates of Riker's Island prison in New York in 1965, after
he
missed a visit to the jail. It was stolen from there in 2003 and
is
still missing.
#THE Madonna with The YARNwinder, by Leonardo da Vinci. Worth
between
£25million and £50million, the classic work was stolen in a daring
raid
by two crooks at the Duke of Buccleuch's Drumlanrig Castle in
August
2003.
#THE Concert, by Vermeer. This was one of many masterpieces stolen in
a
$300million raid on a Boston museum in 1990 by robbers dressed as
cops.
#HEAD Of A Woman, by Pablo Picasso. Valued at £4m, the portrait of
a
Balkan lady with whom Picasso was in love, was stolen from a Saudi
yacht
moored off the coast of Antibes on the French Riviera five years
ago.
#Nature morte a la charlotte,
by Pablo Picasso. Stolen from the Pompidou
Centre in Paris in May this year,
this 1924 work is worth almost
£2m.
------------------------------------------------
FAMOUS ART THEFTS
--Maureen O'Donnell
1911: The world's most famous portrait, Leonardo da Vinci's
"Mona
Lisa,'' was stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Peruggia, "a slightly
mad
Italian painter,'' who wanted to return it to Italy, according to
the
French museum's Web site. He's believed to have walked out with
it
hidden under his coat. It was later found in Italy.
1990: As Boston noisily celebrated St. Patrick's Day, the biggest
fine
art theft in U.S. history -- possibly the world -- occurred at
the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Two men dressed as police
officers
duct-taped and handcuffed museum guards and stole 12
masterpieces
with an estimated value as high as $500 million. The stolen art
included
Rembrandt's "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee'' and "The
Concert''
by Vermeer, the Dutch painter dramatized in the movie
"Girl With a Pearl Earring."
1999: "Dora Maar," Picasso's portrait of one of his great loves,
was stolen from a Saudi yacht in the French port of Antibes.
2003: Thieves on a tour of Drumlanrig Castle stole da Vinci's
"Madonna of the YARNwinder,'' dismaying the Duke of
Buccleuch
and all of Scotland. They wore hats and covered
their faces as they passed security cameras.
------------------------------------------------
RAIDERS OF THE
LOST ART Aug 24 2004
By Brian
Mciver
<<IT'S the seemingly glamorous life of crime, the
glossy art thefts made
famous in films such as The Thomas Crown Affair and
Entrapment. But the
reality of high stakes art robbery - including this
week's £50m theft of
The Scream - is nowhere near as glitzy or as exciting as
the gentleman
thief we see in the movies. Instead, art theft experts say the
£3bn
booming black market is full of vicious thugs, callous sneak thieves
and
Mafia-style organised gangs who threaten and assault guards and
staff
and destroy priceless works in the raids. Rather than filling the
walls
of reclusive millionaires, or stolen to order for obsessive
rich
collectors, most major stolen paintings are used as underworld
currency
for drug or gun deals, or simply held for ransom by money-hungry
crooks.
That is the likely fate of Edvard Munch's The Scream, stolen
from
Oslo's Munch Museum at the weekend, by a ruthless gang of thieves,
who may have actually damaged the iconic painting.
But the Norwegian robbery, where armed thieves simply ran into
the
museum, held up guards and visitors with guns and ripped the
painting
and another Munch classic off the wall, are just the most
recent
examples of an internationally booming trade. Experts say there is
never
a Mr Big character behind the scenes, rarely a man on the inside,
and
most tend to break in quite simply at night by disabling an alarm
when
no-one is around, instead of the cinematic elaborate heists &
strategies.
Some of the most shocking art raids of all time include the theft of
the
Mona Lisa from The Louvre in Paris in 1911 - the work was recovered
two
years later and the theft is cited as the main reason for its
position
as the most famous painting inthe world. The biggest of all time was
the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery in Boston, 1990, where
thieves
dressed as local cops walked in, handcuffed the guards and made off
with
£300m worth of Rembrandts, Degas' and Vermeer paintings, including
The
Concert. None of the works has ever been recovered and there
is
currently a $5m dollar reward for information on the heist.
One of the most audacious was the Asuncion robbery in Paraguay,
two
years ago. There, robbers rented a shop next door to the National
Fine
Arts Museum and tunnelled 80 feet under ground to break in and
steal
£500,000 worth of rare pieces.
While most raids are money related, a £600,000 Chagall theft from
the
Jewish Museum in New York was from a political group demanding
peace in Israel - but it was later discovered by a keen-eyed
postman
after the thieves put it in the mail to one other.
Stephane Breitwesser stole £1bn worth of art from a series of
European
museums, including the Louvre, to compile an art collection of his
own.
After he was arrested, his mum dumped them in the canal and down
her
waste disposal unit to hide the evidence.
The most recent example of art crime in Scotland was the shocking
raid
on the Duke of Buccleuch's Drumlanrig castle last year, when two
crooks
stole Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna With The YARNwinder, in broad daylight
- a work said to
be worth as much as £50m. Investigating officer DCI
Peter McAdam of Dumfries
and Galloway Police said:
'The investigation is still
open.'
------------------------------------------------
Mr. Memory : Am I Right Sir?
Art Neuendorffer