The Rescue Artist

NOTES

This is a work of nonfiction. If readers find themselves eavesdropping on someone’s thoughts—”It’s perfect,” Hill thought. “I’ll be the Man from the Getty”—or privy to an interior monologue—These guys couldn’t be trying to hide—the material came from an interview.

The great bulk of The Scream narrative comes from my interviews with the principal players, notably Charley Hill. In addition, I am grateful to the producers of a BBC-4 TV documentary called The Scream for providing me the unedited transcripts of their interviews. I also made use of a memoir by Jens Kristian Thune, who was chairman of the board of Norway’s National Gallery when The Scream was stolen. I am grateful to Eileen Fredriksen for translating Thune’s account, Med et skrik, into English.

Since this book is in great part an oral history, I have chosen to keep the notes compact. In particular, readers seeking further details of the various thefts mentioned in passing would do well to begin by consulting the extensive archives at http://www.museum-security.org.

Chapter 1: Break-in

The account of The Scream theft in Chapters 1 to 5 is based on interviews with Charley Hill, Dick Ellis, Leif Lier, and Ludvig Nessa; Thune’s book; news reports (particularly those in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet); the BBC-4 documentary cited above; and a second BBC documentary on The Scream case, entitled “The Theft of the Century,” produced by Keith Alexander in 1996.

The minister of culture who found it “hard to imagine that such evil things” as the theft of The Scream could take place was Asa Kleveland. She was interviewed in “The Theft of the Century.”

Chapter 2: Easy Pickings

The figures on stolen art in the Museum of the Missing come from the database of the Art Loss Register and were current as of May 2003.

Steven Keller remarked that many museum guards “couldn’t get jobs flipping burgers.” See “Busted,” Art & Auction, March 2004.

The Louvre’s security shortcomings were detailed in a report by the French national audit office, the Cour des Comptes, in February 2002.

Chapter 6: The Rescue Artist

Jon Dooley, CEO of Invaluable Ltd., likened Charley Hill to “a man fishing with a rod.” Dooley was quoted in an article headlined “Lost and Found” in the Financial Times, September 27, 2002.

Charley Hill’s remark that statistics on art crime are “completely made up” appeared in Anthony Haden-Guest’s “Catch Me If You Can,” Art Review, March 2003.

Michael Kelly was quoted in an article by Robert Vare. See “True to His Words,” Atlantic, April 2004.

Chapter 7: Screenwriters

The best account of the frenzy in the art world in the late 1980s is Cynthia Saltzman’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet: The Story of a Van Gogh Masterpiece, Money, Politics, Collectors, Greed, and Loss (New York: Viking Penguin, 1998).

Chapter 9: The General

The indispensable work on Cahill and the basis for all later accounts of his career, including this one, is Paul Williams’s The General (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 1995). Cahill’s career was dramatized in a film also called The General, directed by John Boorman.

James Donovan told of surviving a car bomb in the London Sunday Mirror, August 8, 1999.

In his book Jan Vermeer (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1962), Lawrence Gowing remarked that “everything of Vermeer is in the Beit Letter. “

The information about Vermeer’s widow selling Lady Writing a Letter to settle a debt with her baker—and the information that the debt, 617 florins, corresponded to roughly $80—was provided by the research staff at the National Gallery of Ireland.

The brief sketch of Vermeer’s life is based on Anthony Bailey’s Vermeer (New York: Henry Holt, 2001) and Norbert Schneider’s Vermeer: The Complete Paintings (Cologne: Taschen, 2000). Robert Hughes noted that Vermeer left no written accounts of his life or his art; see “Shadows and Light,” Time, May 7, 2001. Bailey discussed the identity of Vermeer’s models on pp. 115-116.

Paul Johnson remarked on Vermeer’s long fall from favor; see Art: A New History (New York: HarperCollins, 2003, p. 379).

Thoré paid 500 francs, roughly $2,000 in today’s money, for Young Woman Standing at a Virginal. He paid roughly $16,000 in today’s dollars for Woman with a Pearl Necklace and roughly $8,000 for Young Woman Seated at a Virginal. See Frances Suzman Jowell, “Vermeer and Thoré-Burger: Recoveries of Reputation” in Gaskell and Jonker, eds., Studies in the History of Art, vol. 55 (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1998, pp. 35-58). The conversions from nineteenth-century prices to present-day dollars were provided by the Musée de la Monnaie de Paris.

Laura Cumming made the point that, in the days before museums and mass reproductions, artists might disappear from view; see her fine essay, “Only Here for the Vermeer,” in the Observer, May 27, 2001.

Sir Alfred Beit’s remark that “no amount of money” could compensate him for the loss of his paintings appeared in the New York Times on May 1, 1974, in an article headlined “Insurance Was Low on 19 Works of Art Stolen in Ireland.”

Paul Williams discussed Martin Cahill’s belief that he could sell stolen paintings to unscrupulous art collectors for “millions, countless millions” on a British television documentary called “The Fine Art of Crime” (Fulcrum Productions, 1998).

Chapter 11: Encounter in Antwerp

Rebecca West called the once-fashionable novelist Michael Arlen “every other inch a gentleman,” according to Victoria Glendinning’s biography of West. (The comment is sometimes attributed to Alexander Woollcott.)

Chapter 12: Munch

My account of Munch’s life and The Scream is based on J. P. Hodin’s Edvard Munch (London: Thames & Hudson, 1972), Poul Erik TØjner’s Munch in His Own Words (New York: Prestel, 2003), Reinhold Heller’s The Scream (New York: Viking, 1973), Mara-Helen Wood’s Edvard Munch: The Frieze of Life (London: National Gallery Publications, 1992), Monica Bohm-Duchen’s The Private Life of a Masterpiece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), and Stanley Steinberg and Joseph Weiss’s “The Art of Edvard Munch and Its Function in his Mental Life,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 3, 1954. The psychoanalytic speculation in Steinberg and Weiss is far-fetched (“the swirling red landscape may represent Munch’s dying mother”), but the compilation of biographical facts is useful.

My remark comparing Freud and Munch is a variant on an observation by Christopher Hume, who called Munch “the great liberator of the tormented Self” and wrote that “if Freud was its cartographer, Munch was the illustrator.” See “Munch Kitsch Makes a Fearful Image Safe,” Toronto Star, March 1, 1997.

Simon Winchester’s superb Krakatoa (New York: HarperCollins, 2003) is by far the best account of the volcano’s eruption and its ramifications (including the story of the Pough-keepsie firemen, as well as countless others). The link with The Scream is perhaps the only Krakatoa connection that eluded Winchester.

Chapter 17: Russborough House Redux

The best account of Rose Dugdale’s career, and the theft of the Kenwood Vermeer in particular, was written by Luke Jennings. See “Every Picture Tells a Story,” London Evening Standard, December 28, 1999.

Chapter 18: Money Is Honey

Peter Wilson’s remark on ethics and auctions appeared in Robert Lacey, Sotheby’s: Bidding for Class (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998, p. 183).

The observation that the prices of art in the past do not match today’s prices and the Robert Hughes quotation beginning “one bought paintings for pleasure” come from a fascinating, two-part article by Robert Hughes. See “Art and Money,” New Art Examiner, October 1984 and November 1984.

Harold Sack’s remark that “money is honey” appeared in “Rewriting Auction Records,” New York Times, January 25, 1990. The art dealer who observed that some buyers wanted to spend $1 million was Arnold Glimcher. See Calvin Tomkins, “Irises,” The New Yorker, April 4, 1988.

S. N. Behrman noted in his brilliantly witty Duveen (New York: Random House, 1951, p. 293) that Joseph Duveen’s clients “preferred to pay huge sums.”

John Walker was quoted on “the cost per square inch” of Ginevra Benci; see William Grampp, Pricing the Priceless (New York: Basic Books, 1989, p. 25).

Christopher Burge was quoted on “a whole new set of prices” in “The Specter of the Billion Dollar Show,” Washington Post, June 9, 1988.

The story about Renoir trading a painting for a pair of shoes appears in Ambroise Vollard, Renoir: An Intimate Record (New York: Dover, 1990, p. 50). Vollard was an art dealer and collector who wrote biographies of Renoir, Cézanne, and Degas. Renoir’s Portrait of Ambroise Vollard is at the Courtauld in London.

The New York Times writer who compared the prices of Impressionist paintings to those of Boeing 757s was Peter Passell. See “Vincent Van Gogh, Meet Adam Smith,” New York Times, February 4, 1990.

Pepe Karmel called Boy with a Pipe “a pleasant, minor painting,” and said he was “stunned” that it “could command a price appropriate to a real masterpiece by Picasso. This just shows how much the marketplace is divorced from the true values of art.” See “A Record Picasso and the Hype Price of Status Objects,” Washington Post, May 7, 2004.

Chapter 19: Dr. No

Bernard Berenson’s remark about “a pawnbroker’s shop for Croesus” comes from Philipp Blom, To Have and to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 2003, p. 127).

The Hearst anecdote is from W A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst (New York: Scribners, 1961, p. 465).

J. Paul Getty’s diary entry is from Werner Muensterberger, Collecting: An Unruly Passion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 142).

Robert Hughes discussed “how frenzied the world would be if there were only one copy of each book in the world” in “Sold!” Time, November 27, 1989.

Richard Feigen commented that “masterpieces evaporate” in “Getty Closing in on Acquiring Last Raphael in Private Hands,” by Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times, October 31, 2002.

The argument that “art was priceless” was S. N. Behrman’s formulation of Duveen’s sales pitch. See Duveen, p. 292.

For a fuller discussion of “the complex interplay between art and ownership,” including insights on the distinction between works of art that belong to everybody versus those that one person can own, see “When Thieves Steal Art, They Steal from All of Us” by Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune, December 22, 2002.

Robert Hiscox talked about art thieves on a BBC radio program called “Stealing Beauty,” broadcast on July 8, 2001.

The anecdote about Marshall d’Estrées is from Pierre Cabanne, Great Collectors (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1961, p. ix). This classic account of collectors and their obsessiveness is so comprehensive that it threatens to become an example of the mania that it explores.

The specific examples Adam Smith had in mind were gold, silver, and diamonds, whose “principal merit… arises from their beauty” rather than their utility; the same could surely be said of art. Colin Piatt quotes the passage from Smith and draws on it for the title of his excellent history of art and art buying, Marks of Opulence (London: HarperCollins, 2004). Smith’s remarks are from Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1, Chapter 11.

Macintyre’s remark appears in a stimulating essay called “For Your Eyes Only: The Art of the Obsessive,” Times (London), July 13, 2002.

Chapter 20: “This Is Peter Brewgal”

The Chicago Tribune characterized art thieves as a “cultured coterie of malefactors;” see “When Thieves Steal Art, They Steal from All of Us,” December 22, 2002.

The first and by far the best account of the Courtauld theft was “The Case of the Stolen ‘Christ’ “by Henry Porter, in the Evening Standard Magazine, October 1991. The direct quotations in the account in the text are from Porter’s article and from my interviews with Dennis Farr.

Chapter 21: Mona Lisa Smile

Allen Gore’s claim that Idi Amin collected stolen art appeared in Judith Hennessee’s “Why Great Art Always Will Be Stolen (and Seldom Found),” Connoisseur, July 1990.

The best biography of Georgiana is Amanda Foreman’s Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire (New York: Random House, 1999).

Chapter 23: Crook or Clown?

Enger joked that he was better at crime than at soccer in an interview that appeared in Keith Alexander’s BBC documentary “The Theft of the Century.”

Chapter 31: A Stranger

Johnsen remarked that Charley Hill looked “too elegant” to be a policeman in an interview in the BBC documentary “The Theft of the Century.”

Chapter 34: The Thrill of the Hunt

Peter Scott described the “sexual, antisocial excitement” of crime in his memoir Gentleman Thief: Recollections of a Cat Burglar (London: HarperCollins, 1995, p. 4).