The Art Investigator

You can easily picture the scene, the cliche start of a film noir detective story. A door with a frosted glass panel, like the ones in the corridors of the Nicholas Building, and a sign ‘Art Investigator’. The door slowly swings open, like the curtain at the theatre, and the muse is standing there. She is now in trouble. No surprise, people don’t come in that door when life is fine and dandy. I offer her a seat, and she sits down and starts to cry. Who is this weeping woman?

Pablo Picasso, Femme au mouchoir, 1938

Everybody expects me to solve the Picasso theft at the NGV as if I stood a chance of finding the culprits in one of the greatest unsolved art thefts. What, I am some kind of art investigator? No, I’m a blogger, an independent researcher and a writer, and I’m trying to promote my book with this post. And I did find about Picasso taken from the Queensland Art Gallery, when forgeries of Jackson Pollock appeared in the Woman’s Weekly and other evil art crimes.

I wanted to read a paperback true-crime collection of stories about art. So I had to write one – The Picasso Ransom—true crimes from Australia – all about art, with none of the blood, gore or copaganda.

“A most excellent book that I’ve devoured in the last twenty-four hours.” Andrew Rule

So now I’m a true crime writer, given that I have been on Life & Crimes with Andrew Rule (“High crimes with paint brushes” podcast 13/5/2023). Andrew Rule liked my book because there were “new and fresh” stories about old criminals, like Murray Farquar and Steven Sellers. And because, as he put it, “a sly turn of phrase and a sly wit.”

Two people have emailed me in the hope I could be an art investigator. Requests to help find a stolen garden statue with an Olympic connection and also to find an artist and inmate of Pentridge Prison, J. G. Cust. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to help in either case.

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Art Crime Books

I’ve been reading Simon Houpt’s Museum of the Missing, an attractive coffee table book about stolen art (thanks, Victor). It is the first book I’ve read about art crimes since finishing my own book, The Picasso Ransom. I read several others before and during writing. Submitting a manuscript to publishers involves reviewing similar books. Publishers will always ask what books are similar. If your book or art is unique, it isn’t marketable; what people want is its unique aspects not a unique product.

Most often, I would mention Gabriella Coslovich Whiteley On Trial (Melbourne University Press, 2017), which will be the basis of a soon-to-be-released, two-part documentary to be shown on the ABC. Coslovich’s unique aspect is her focus on one recent art forgery trial.

Houpt’s unique aspect is plenty of images of stolen art. Finding images, getting copyright permission, and labelling them is a difficult job in itself. One I found so stressful with my first book, Sculptures of Melbourne, was that I was determined my next book would be without any pictures.

Houpt starts with the driving factors for crime in the development art market and war before getting down to the messy business of art theft. The problem with writing about art theft is that stories are only complete if the theft has been solved, and most art thefts aren’t. Searching for a satisfying conclusion drives Houpt to the messier business of art detectives and private investigators and the non-reveal of current museum security systems. If only he had stuck to his war and pillage thesis, he could have moved on to the FBI’s art crimes unit (established after the looting during the criminal Iraq War), Tamil Nadu state’s Idol Wing (established post-colonial) and the academics and bloggers working to repatriate stolen gods from national galleries and museums.

Although Houpt is primarily focused on Europe and North America, it is worth remembering that India and Asia have been the primary sites for looting antiquities in the later half of the 20th Century.

Some of Houpt’s stories are well known, and two have been turned into Hollywood movies, The General (1998) and American Animals. The General is about Dublin criminal Martin Cahill, played by Brendan Gleeson, who stole seventeen old masters. And American Animals is about four university students’ theft of rare books. Another story that Houpt tells is that of Rose Dugdale, which is covered in depth by Anthony M. Amore in The Woman Who Stole Vermeer (Pegasus Crime, 2020).

Other books on art and crime that I reviewed and posted on this blog include:

Gideon Haigh A Scandal in Bohemia, the life and death of Mollie Dean (Hamish Hamilton, 2018)

Riah Pryor Crime and the Art Market (Lund Humphries, 2016)

Noah Charney’s The Art of Forgery (Phaidon, 2015) has many true crime stories of art forgeries. Forgers are examined and grouped in chapters by motivation: genius, pride, revenge, fame, crime, opportunism, money and power. This works well. However, it is the usual lineup of art forgers: Lothar Malskat, Alceo Dossena, Han Van Meegeren, Elmyr de Hory, Eric Hebborn, Tom Keating etc.

I’ve also read Eric Hebborn’s The Art Forgers Handbook (1997) and Tom Keeating’s The Fakes Progress (1977). The Art Forgers Handbook is a charming book with many recipes and advice, enough to understand why someone would want Eric Hebborn dead in an alley in Rome in 1996. The Fakes Progress is the authorised biography of Tom Keating, who enjoys portraying himself as a loveable Cockney rogue.

As well as I’ve also reviewed Marc Fennell’s tv series about the Picasso theft, Framed. Fennell’s other series, Stuff the British Stole, is also relevant, even though the British stole more than just art and antiquities.

The book launch

I’ve been busy with publicity and marketing my book The Picasso Ransom for the last couple of weeks. And this blog post is another aspect of that.

(photo by Linda Elly)

On Saturday, I had a book launch at my local pub, The Woodlands on Sydney Road. I made a bit of a speech, read a bit from the book, did a bit of show and tell with an antique art magazine the NSW vice squad confiscated, and had an extensive Q&A session about writing the book and art crimes led by Neil Kerlogue. Thanks, Neil, for that and your introduction. And thanks to Linda Elly for the photos of the launch. So many people to thank, including the Woodlands Hotel, for providing the venue in their decorative upstairs bar. They said they’d keep the bar open for the first hour, but they kept serving drinks until 6 pm when just my table was left. And I’m not the only author who would recommend them for a book launch.

My book is The Picasso Ransom and other stories about art and crime in Australia. I must try to emphasise that most of it is more stories about art and crime, not just the famous theft of Picasso’s Weeping Woman from the NGV.

One of the other stories is the Peter Gant and Aman Siddique trial for forgery. I hear rumours about a two-part documentary being made for the ABC. The documentary will have illustrations by Bill Luke sitting beside me in the reporters’ box during the trial.

On the subject of documentaries on stories I cover in my book. Whatever happened to the one Jacob Obermann was making about Paul Yore?

Will my next book be The Picasso Ransom 2, more stories about art and crime in Australia? There are already some stories developing. Including the protests in museums, the attempted decapitated of a banana skull statue, stolen garden sculptures and more of the continuing statue wars. Ronald Ferguson told me about a guy shot in the back stealing some paintings in the 1970s – I must look into that. Will I include a story about an art dealer stealing work from artists? The police don’t often get involved in what is, to some extent, a business dispute, but if the right story comes along. Contact me if you can add details or know of a crime involving art in Australia that I have missed.

My book is available from the usual online sellers (Amazon), but please ask your local bookstore to get it and ask your local library to buy a copy. (Unlike the sales, the library reading copyright royalties for my first book, Sculptures of Melbourne, continues to grow). 

Available in Australia and New Zealand through: 

• Brunswick Bound
• Dymocks Nowra
• Readings Doncaster
• Booktopia

In Canada and US through:

• Barnes & Noble 
• walmart.com
• Chapters / Indigo (Canada) ebook only

And in Europe and UK through:

• Adlibris  
• Agapea
• Blackwells
• Book Depository Ltd
• and others

The Woman Who Stole Vermeer

“We are looking for either a master thief or a madman.” Scotland Yard incorrectly assumed. For it was a woman, Rose Dugdale, who was the mastermind behind art thefts and one attempt at an aerial bombing of a police station. The book could have been titled: “the woman who stole Vermeers” because she probably stole two.

This biography of Rose Dugdale follows a strictly chronological narrative. Consequently, it has a prolonged start with her childhood and education, including her PhD. Followed by the development of her earnest politics. And then more chapters on the background of the Irish Troubles, Bloody Sunday and other revolutionary politics of the 1960s. 

There are 262 pages in the book, including the author’s note, bibliography, endnotes and acknowledgements. It is only on p. 99 that any art is stolen, and then they are unnamed paintings from Dugdale’s family home. And not until p.147 that a Vermeer is stolen.

Not that it takes the police long to arrest her and recover the stolen art. Famous stolen art might not be able to be sold, but there are often political motivations for art theft. And Dugdale was all about politics.

Despite defending Dugdale’s autonomy and leadership in his introduction, author, Anthony M. Amore fails to provide evidence that anyone ever suggested otherwise.

Amore, the Director of Security and Chief Investigator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, has written two other books about art crimes Stealing Rembrandt and The Art of the Con. However, his “investigator and security practitioner” background was a problem because his subject, Dugdale, wouldn’t talk to him for fear her interview could be used to convict former IRA members. Not that his background in security seems to give him any insights into the three art thefts. Unfortunately, this means that he can’t examine Dugdale’s intellectual life, nor does it provide any insight into Irish politics.

From my background in Melbourne, I could see how Dugdale’s attempted ransom of the Vermeer could have influenced the Australian Cultural Terrorists to ransom Picasso’s Weeping Woman and their choice of the word ‘terrorist’. 

Furthermore, my own research shows that although there are less than forty authentic paintings by Vermeer, it is remarkable that at least five were stolen in the 1970s (something Amore fails to mention). Even more notable of those five, at least three were stolen for political reasons (to aid the IRA and Bengali refugees of East Pakistan). The small size of his paintings made Vermeer the perfect target for art theft.

Anthony M. Amore The Woman Who Stole Vermeer (Pegasus Crime, 2020)

Dr Louis Smith & the arts

To one side of the entrance to the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton stands a bronze bust of a man with a moustache. It is on a granite pedestal plinth with the following words engraved:

The honorable Dr LL Smith FRCS

Erected by public subscription 26th March 1914

Chairman Exhibition Trustees 1884-1909

A trustee from 1881

Dr Louis Lawrence Smith (1830-1910) was a celebrity doctor, anatomy museum director and politician in colonial Melbourne. A witty, self-promoter, and as unscrupulous and corrupt as the best Australian politicians. He also had some odd connections to the visual arts.

Being a celebrity doctor, only the best will do with the bust by Australia’s first international superstar artist, Bertram Mackennal. It is not a significant work in Mackennal’s career, a small commission compared to others that he had from Melbourne’s doctors (you must see the grave commissioned by Dr Springthorpe at Boroondara General Cemetery in Kew).

Dr Smith arrived in Melbourne in 1852 at the start of the gold rush as a ship’s surgeon. His father was a theatrical entrepreneur in London, and from him, Smith learned how to gain attention by spending enormous amounts on advertising. Smith specialised in venereal disease at a time when there were no effective cures. Besides a medical practice, he ran an anatomy museum, a nineteenth-century cover for sex education, alongside his clinic in Bourke Street, until 1869 when it was ordered closed because it offended ‘taste’.

Dr Smith supported the early release of the bushranger turned sculptor William Stanford. He examined Stanford in Pentridge Prison and diagnosed that Stanford had contracted a lung disease from the fine granite dust that he had inhaled carving basalt. Dr Smith’s prognosis was that Stanford could not be expected to live long. Smith diagnosis was incorrect; Stanford did live for many more years, working as a stonemason and did not die of any lung disease.

A petition for Stanford’s release in 1869 failed. Stanford completed his fountain in 1870. In the 1871 Victorian elections, Smith won the seat of Richmond as the ‘people’s candidate’ and called for ‘an unconditional pardon’ for Stanford. Stanford was ‘discharged to freedom by remission’ in October 1871. Smith provided him with an interest-free loan of £900 (about $140,000 today) to buy a house on Madeline Street in Prahran and establish a monumental masons business on Dandenong Road in the then working-class suburb of Windsor. If all parliamentarians lent released prisoners as much money, recidivism would be far lower.

Stanford’s Fountain in Melbourne

Later Dr Smith gave a gift to the Royal Exhibition Building of a ‘Rembrandt painting’ The wayfarer. Smith claimed it had been given to him by the Duke of York in 1901. The painting was subsequently stolen during a burglary at the Exhibition Building in Melbourne on the 29 April 1932. The canvas was cut from its frame, making me doubt its authenticity, as most Rembrandts are painted on wood. And before we mourn the loss of a masterpiece from the golden age of Dutch painting, remember that there were thousands of more paintings attributed to ‘Rembrandt’ in 1932 than there are now. Even supposing the original attribution was even close to being accurate, the painting would be attributed to one of Rembrandt’s students or followers. The inaccurate attribution may itself have been a reason to steal it, saving the owners from the future embarrassment of owning a fake.

Everything I learn about Dr Smith raises more questions.

Crime and the Art Market

Riah Pryor Crime and the Art Market (Lund Humphries, 2016)

How corrupt is the art market?

Riah Pryor is an art history graduate who worked as a researcher at New Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit. Her experience should have provided more  to the reader. Instead there is a tiny dab of narrative at the start of chapters to suggest something of the author’s experience.

It is difficult to define art crimes; Pryor mentions a Nth Ireland police report where a stolen tube of paint was classed as an art theft. Pryor’s focus is on the economic side of art crimes: stolen art, illegally exported antiquities, art forgery and art fraud rather than art vandalism, art censorship and art as criminalised protests. However, in this did introduce me to other ways that art can be used in crime; one of these is ‘elegant bribery’.

‘Elegant bribery’ where an official is given a fake of little value, the official then puts the fake up for auction, where it is sold at a high price that a genuine work would attract to another member of syndicate acting as if he mistook the fake as a genuine. In this way all the transactions appear legitimate. I can only assume that elegant bribery was detected only through data matching because Pryor doesn’t give many details about this or other the crimes.

No particular crimes are looked at in any depth in the book. The lack of detail might be deliberate in order not to assist in crimes, as attested in an anecdote from an art authentication lab expert but the lack of details makes the book read like a colourless report about art crime from the perspective of law enforcement. It is as dry as a policy paper and her conclusions, although reasonable, are not particularly useful nor informative.

“There is no ‘correct’ reason to care about art crime, or at least no reason which all will agree on. However, determining why someone does or does not care is probably the most effective way to go about working with them to agree on future ways of tackling it.” (p.88)

Dividing the book into “Villains” and “Heroes” is a simplistic strategy and shows Pryor’s police mind set from time her New Scotland Yard. It also fails to work with Pryor’s own solution to get all sectors of the arts industry involved with stopping art crime for their own benefit. 

Art crime is a hot topic, at least for publishers, art historians and the general public, although not for the police who seem to prefer their criminals violent, stupid and intoxicated. Only if you are obsessed with the subject should you read Pryor’s Crime and the Art Market as it is simply the most boring book on the subject. If this has whet your appetite for more about art and crime then please read some of my other posts on the subject.

The theft of La belle Hollandaise

Forgery Trial Book

The Forgery Trial

The Case of Art Forgeries

True Crime and Art

Whaley’s Stolen Paintings

The alleged theft of La belle Hollandaise

Bizarrely, Picasso’s Weeping Woman was not the first of his paintings to have been allegedly stolen from an Australian state art gallery to make a point. In 1967 Picasso’s La belle Hollandaise (The beautiful Dutch woman) was stolen from the Queensland Art Gallery. At the time the painting was valued at $200,000 (the equivalent of $2,367,132 today).

Picasso had painted it in 1905 on cardboard mounted on wood, 77.1 × 65.8 centimetres, in gouache, a water-based poster-paint. La belle Hollandaise depicts a young woman wearing nothing but a traditional Dutch lacy-cloth cap. It was painted when Picasso was between his early ‘Blue period’, when he painted sad, downbeat subjects, and his ‘Rose period,’ when he focused on pleasant scenes in a primarily pinky hue.

The eccentric multi-millionaire grazier Major Harold De Vahl Rubin had purchased La belle Hollandaise for £6,000 in 1940 (about $477,882 today). In 1959 he wanted to know its current value, so he put it up for auction and bought it again, setting a record for the highest price paid for a living artist. Satisfied that he knew its value, he then donated his entire collection of modern European art to the Queensland Art Gallery: a Degas, a Renoir, a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Vlaminck, and three works by Picasso, including La belle Hollandaise.

In the middle of the night, on Monday 5 June, Robert Ferguson climbed up some scaffolding on the outside of the gothic brick building on Gregory Terrace in Bowen Hills, Brisbane. The building is now known as the Old Museum Building, but back in 1967 it was the Queensland Art Gallery. Ferguson forced open a top floor window with a screwdriver and entered the Gallery. Fortunately for Ferguson, there was no burglar alarm in that part of the Gallery. Little is known about the 22-year-old New Zealander who had been working as a labourer, but his father confirmed to reporters that his son did have a passion for art and was a frequent visitor to art galleries. Ferguson later claimed to have been motivated by a strange idealism. He was aware that the Gallery was considering the sale of La belle Hollandaise to raise money for a new building to be built on the southern bank of the Brisbane River.

The full story of what happened is one of the stories in my book The Picasso Ransom.  La belle Hollandaise still hangs in the Queensland Art Gallery.