The Rescue Artist Part 7

The years Hill spent chasing muggers down alleyways had done little to engage him. The stakes were too low, the surprises too few, the crimes too simple. Hill didn't fully sort out what was missing until his first world-cla.s.s case, the hunt for Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter Lady Writing a Letter and the seventeen other paintings stolen from Russborough House by Martin Cahill in 1986. and the seventeen other paintings stolen from Russborough House by Martin Cahill in 1986.

That once-in-a-lifetime theft was in fact nothing of the sort. Thieves had hit Russborough House in 1974, before Cahill came along. They would return in 2001 and again in 2002, each time making off with masterpieces worth millions. Several paintings, including Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter Lady Writing a Letter, have been stolen more than once, and Gainsborough's Madame Baccelli: Dancer Madame Baccelli: Dancer has been stolen three times so far. has been stolen three times so far.

Hill once asked an Irish gangster named Martin Foley what he had against Lady Beit, the elderly owner of Russborough House. "It's f.o.o.kin' nothin' to do with her," came the reply. "It's just f.o.o.kin' easy." Russborough House is a great, rambling place, Hill notes, "with bars on the window and locks and video cameras and all that s.h.i.+t, but the thieves are in and out-they know what they're going to take-and it's so isolated the cops take fifteen minutes to get there."

"They enjoy doing it," Hill says. "They're violent thieves, and if anyone gets in their way they'll run 'em down." For the crooks, this is sport (though, as is the case with most sports in the modern world, the dream of riches is never far off). The media, too, treat each new attack on Russborough House as light entertainment, a perennial story not far different from Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog, and his shadow.

If art crime in general is "serious farce," the here-they-go-again thefts at Russborough House are perhaps the ultimate example. Consider the setting, first of all. Russborough House is by repute the grandest house in Ireland. No crime scene could have less in common with the mean streets of a commonplace robbery. Next, the crime itself. Who has Vermeers and Goyas hanging on their walls?

Finally, the victims, who are too remote to win much sympathy. The late Sir Alfred was a nearly silent figure notable mainly for what one obituary called his "Teutonic earnestness." Journalists found Lady Beit equally hard to fathom. In their portrayals, she sounded like Margaret Dumont, the grande dame who played Groucho Marx's foil. In the summer of 2002, Lady Beit took a journalist on a tour of Russborough House. She gestured toward Goya's Portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate Portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate (which Hill had recovered with Vermeer's (which Hill had recovered with Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter) Lady Writing a Letter). "That painting means a great deal to me, for two reasons," Lady Beit explained. "Alfred was standing beneath it when he proposed to me in the house, and then during the Dugdale raid we were tied up beneath it."

The Dugdale raid, in 1974, was the first attack on Russborough House. The thieves in the various raids have been as over-the-top as the victims and Russborough House itself. Rose Dugdale, who organized that first attack, which was by far the most inept of the four robberies, was an English heiress whose trust fund paid her $200,000 a year. Raised on a 600-acre estate (her parents also owned homes in London and Scotland), Dugdale went to school in Switzerland and then studied economics at Oxford. In her twenties she proclaimed herself a revolutionary, though it was the debutante's life she had seen in her teens that had opened her eyes and turned her stomach. "My coming-out ball was one of those p.o.r.nographic affairs," she told reporters after her arrest, "which cost about what sixty old-age pensioners receive in six months."

Dugdale's first ventures into crime were marked by ambition and amateurism in roughly equal measures. In June 1973, when she was 32, Dugdale stole a miscellany of paintings, silver, and jewelry from her parents' home and was caught almost at once. The profits, it emerged during the trial, were intended for the IRA. "I think the risk that you will ever again commit burglary or any dishonesty is extremely remote," the judge declared, and then he set the defendant free.

Six months later, Dugdale proved the judge an optimist. In January 1974, while posing as a tourist vacationing in County Donegal in Ireland, Dugdale rented a helicopter for a bit of sight-seeing. She convinced the pilot to help her load an odd cargo, four milk churns. Once the helicopter was airborne, Dugdale hijacked it. The milk churns, she announced, were crammed with explosives. Dugdale's plan was to bomb a nearby police station. As it turned out, almost everyone but but the police was in grave danger. One milk churn almost blew up inside the helicopter and had to be shoved frantically out the door. It plummeted into a river. Two other churns missed their targets and fell harmlessly into the sea. The last landed in a housing project but failed to go off. Somehow Dugdale escaped arrest. the police was in grave danger. One milk churn almost blew up inside the helicopter and had to be shoved frantically out the door. It plummeted into a river. Two other churns missed their targets and fell harmlessly into the sea. The last landed in a housing project but failed to go off. Somehow Dugdale escaped arrest.

One month after the helicopter caper, on a February evening in 1974, a guard at Kenwood House, a small museum in north London, heard the crash of metal against metal and then the sound of breaking gla.s.s. He rushed in and found that someone had smashed through a barred window with a sledgehammer, grabbed Vermeer's Guitar Player Guitar Player, and fled. The break-in, the police said, was "an act of primitive violence."

The painting, renowned for its loveliness, depicts a young woman absorbed in her music and caught in midsong; somehow Vermeer contrived to paint the strings of the guitar so that we can virtually see them vibrating. In a corner of the painted scene, deep in shadow, a few stacked-up books sit neglected. The musician and her guitar glow with a honey-colored light.

The frame turned up the day after the theft, damaged, in a bush in Hampstead Heath where the thieves had thrown it. The public and the media responded to the break-in with the usual paradoxical mix of outrage and nonchalance. On the one hand, the stolen work was a priceless masterpiece and recovering it was a national priority. On the other hand, it was only a painting. Television reporters announced the robbery in breathless tones. Tellingly, though, they had to describe the missing picture without showing pictures of it, because the company that held the rights to the color slide had demanded a 10 fee for its use. Both the BBC and ITV, the commercial television channel, decided to save their money.

At this point, the story took an unexpected twist. Newspapers and radio stations began receiving anonymous phone messages. The three-centuries-old painting had apparently been stolen to right a twentieth-century political grievance. The Guitar Player The Guitar Player would be destroyed, the caller warned, unless the authorities transferred two IRA activists, sisters named Dolours and Marion Price, from a London prison to an Irish one. The Price sisters had been convicted the previous year of carrying out a string of car bombings in London. Two hundred and thirty people had been injured. would be destroyed, the caller warned, unless the authorities transferred two IRA activists, sisters named Dolours and Marion Price, from a London prison to an Irish one. The Price sisters had been convicted the previous year of carrying out a string of car bombings in London. Two hundred and thirty people had been injured.

The sisters, who were themselves demanding to be transferred to Ireland and on hunger strike, had been sentenced to life in prison. But the thieves had apparently made their phone calls without informing the Price sisters of their plan. Two weeks after the theft, on March 6, 1974, an envelope arrived at the London Times Times. Inside was a tiny strip of painted canvas, about an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide, and an oddly phrased note, unpunctuated and all in lowercase, typed on a piece of thin blue paper. The strip of canvas had been cut from the back of The Guitar Player The Guitar Player, the note said, and it went on, "... the price sisters have given no sign of grat.i.tude all we have established is that a capitalist society values its treasures more than humanity therefore we will carry our lunacy to its utmost extent the painting will be burnt on st patricks night with much cavorting about in the true lunatic fas.h.i.+on."

On St. Patrick's Day, Albert Price, the father of the convicted bombers, issued a plea asking the thieves to return the painting. His daughters had studied art, Price said, and they didn't want Vermeer's painting destroyed. "Dolours has seen the painting," her father said, "and she told me that there were few beautiful things left and it would be a sin to destroy it. They appreciate the effort that is being made on their behalf but do not want anything to happen to the painting." St. Patrick's Day pa.s.sed uneventfully.

One month later, on the evening of April 26, 1974, with The Guitar Player The Guitar Player still missing, Rose Dugdale approached Russborough House on foot. She rang the bell at the service entrance, and when a servant opened the door, she said that her car had broken down. While Dugdale described her predicament, three gun-wielding men suddenly appeared behind her and pushed their way inside the house. They ordered the servant to lead them to Sir Alfred and Lady Beit, who were sitting in the library listening to music. The gunmen forced the Beits to the floor and tied them up. still missing, Rose Dugdale approached Russborough House on foot. She rang the bell at the service entrance, and when a servant opened the door, she said that her car had broken down. While Dugdale described her predicament, three gun-wielding men suddenly appeared behind her and pushed their way inside the house. They ordered the servant to lead them to Sir Alfred and Lady Beit, who were sitting in the library listening to music. The gunmen forced the Beits to the floor and tied them up.

Now Dugdale reappeared, telling her three accomplices which paintings to s.n.a.t.c.h off the wall. She interrupted her orders now and then to shout "Capitalist pigs!" at the Beits. Ten minutes later, the thieves fled with nineteen paintings that represented the gems from one of the greatest private art collections in the world.

A week later, the director of Ireland's National Gallery received an anonymous letter. Part of the message carried an impossible-to-miss echo of the St. Patrick's Day ransom note from the Vermeer theft the month before. The Beit paintings would be destroyed, the letter warned, unless the English authorities transferred the Price sisters to Ireland, along with two fellow prisoners and a $1.2 million ransom. With the letter, the thieves included three pages torn from Sir Alfred's diary, which had been stolen at the same time as the paintings.

The thieves' plan made little sense-who would try to put pressure on politicians in London by stealing paintings in Dublin?-but, regardless, the Russborough House paintings were gone. The Irish police organized a nationwide search for the thieves. On the day after the ransom letter was delivered, a policeman checking hotels and rental properties for suspicious characters peeked through the window of a small, isolated cottage near the sea, in Glandore, 200 miles from Dublin. Three oil paintings caught his eye. (These turned out to be Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, Goya's Portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate Portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate, and Velasquez's Maid in Kitchen with Christ and Disciples Outside Window Maid in Kitchen with Christ and Disciples Outside Window-the best of the 19 stolen works.) Rose Dugdale had rented the cottage two days before the theft. The other paintings were still in the trunk of her car. All were unhurt.

Dugdale was arrested. Only a few days later, the police in London received an anonymous phone tip bringing welcome news. They raced to St. Bartholomew's Church. In the graveyard, leaning against a headstone, inside an old newspaper tied up with a piece of string, they found Vermeer's Guitar Player Guitar Player.

Dugdale was never charged with stealing The Guitar Player The Guitar Player, though the police a.s.sume that she was responsible. In June 1974, a month after she was found with the Russborough House paintings, she was put on trial in Dublin. She pleaded "proudly and incorruptibly guilty" and was sentenced to nine years in prison.

In 1986, Martin Cahill robbed Russborough House. In this second theft, in contrast with the Dugdale one, the Beits were away. Cahill's gang made off with eighteen paintings. In June 2001, the thieves were back. This was the third robbery overall, and the first in daylight. In a stolen Mitsubis.h.i.+ jeep, three thieves roared up the steps to Russborough House, rammed the front doors, and raced inside. Three minutes later they raced out again with Bellotto's View of Florence View of Florence and (for the third time) Gainsborough's and (for the third time) Gainsborough's Madame Baccelli Madame Baccelli. The thieves sped away in a second stolen car. The two paintings together were worth 2.3 million.

The theft was bold but hardly polished. The thieves poured a can of gasoline over the jeep and tried, unsuccessfully, to set it on fire, and the police found a pair of used gloves inside. During their getaway, the thieves tried to hijack a car at gunpoint (to throw off police pursuit), but the driver refused to hand over his keys.

It happened again in 2002, a fourth attack on the same target, this one at dawn on a September morning. Just four days before, police acting on a tip had found the two paintings that had been stolen from Russborough House the year before. A month before that, they had recovered a Rubens portrait stolen from Russborough House in 1986. The point of the latest theft was presumably to remind the police that, despite their recent successes, it was the crooks who had the upper hand.

This time thieves stole five paintings, worth a total of $76 million. The two best were by Rubens. His Portrait of a Dominican Monk Portrait of a Dominican Monk had been stolen before, by Martin Cahill. This latest theft differed only in details from its predecessor of the year before. Rather than crash through the front doors, the thieves drove up to Russborough House from the back. Armed with a makes.h.i.+ft battering ram, they blasted through the steel shutters that blocked a ground-floor window, took what they wanted, and raced off at 100 miles an hour. The lone guard on duty in the sprawling house, a caretaker in his seventies, stood no chance. had been stolen before, by Martin Cahill. This latest theft differed only in details from its predecessor of the year before. Rather than crash through the front doors, the thieves drove up to Russborough House from the back. Armed with a makes.h.i.+ft battering ram, they blasted through the steel shutters that blocked a ground-floor window, took what they wanted, and raced off at 100 miles an hour. The lone guard on duty in the sprawling house, a caretaker in his seventies, stood no chance.

"They do it," says Charley Hill, "because they're flipping the bird to the Irish state and the police." So far, nearly all the stolen paintings have come back. All Rose Dugdale's paintings were found with her. All but two of Cahill's haul have turned up. The two paintings stolen in 2001 and the five stolen in 2002 have all been found, by police following up on tips.

But the thieves have the advantage, and they know it. When the mood strikes, they'll hit again.

18.

Money Is Honey If the Russborough House thefts have a moral, it is that the lure of big money is only one of the reasons that thieves steal big-time art. But none of the other reasons-the notoriety, the thrill, the thieves' urge to flaunt their contempt for the patrons and collectors of art-would ever come into play if great paintings did not command stunning prices.

The giant numbers skew everything. "The first thing you have to understand about the art world," Charley Hill likes to say, "is that, with a very few exceptions, including me, everyone's a crook." This is, in part, a joke. In small part.

Hill lives in a black-and-white universe, and he contemptuously dismisses the commonplace view that the world is composed largely of honest, hardworking folk. Whether in politics or history or society at large, he sees a swarm of crooks and con men and cheaters and backstabbers and hypocrites, with, here and there, a hero.

For a man with Hill's preconceptions, art is the perfect field. Revolving around hugely desirable, one-of-a-kind objects whose value is in large measure a matter of opinion, the art world's upper tiers are a natural home for vanity, envy, and greed. Moreover, the art market is a virtually unregulated, anything-goes bazaar. In short, it is a stage for the human comedy in its most rambunctious and delectable form. "I live in a world of b.o.l.l.o.c.ks and bulls.h.i.+t," Hill says. His lament would carry more weight if he did not so plainly revel in what he professes to regret.

In Hill's jaundiced view, Ulving and Johnsen were merely the latest unsavory characters he'd run across in a field beset by scoundrels and renegades. Many of the top-end players all but acknowledge that no one is quite as high-minded as he seems. They are more likely to quote than to fret about the old joke that the art trade is made up of "shady people peddling bright colors." To protest in indignation would be to proclaim oneself a novice and a rube, close cousin to the playgoer who rushed onstage to wrest a knife from the villain.

"One knows perfectly well that it has been rubbish all the time," remarked Peter Wilson, for more than twenty years the chairman of Sotheby's. "When I go and advise someone to sell their picture because now is the moment to sell it, and they're going to make more money than they'd ever dreamt of, and there's never going to be another moment like this, I know that I'm giving them the wrong advice. I should be telling them to keep their picture, because isn't that what we are telling our buyers-that now is the ideal moment to invest, and that they should all be buying?"

The rich have always collected art, but the money frenzy that now surrounds great paintings is something new. Even the highest prices from past centuries, when translated into today's dollars, fall far short of modern records. One key reason, the critic and art historian Robert Hughes points out, is that the idea of art as an investment scarcely existed before the twentieth century. "One bought paintings for pleasure, for status, for commemoration, or to cover a hole in the ancestral ceiling," Hughes remarks. "But one did not buy them in the expectation that they would make one richer."

Today that expectation-or, at any rate, that hope-is central. But if art is also business, it is a singularly strange business. Fas.h.i.+on and chance play central roles. A year before his death, van Gogh wrote a letter to his brother thanking him for his latest loan and boldly claiming, "I dare swear to you that my sunflowers are worth 500 francs," which would be perhaps $500 in today's dollars. No buyer agreed. In 1987, in a frantic auction at Christie's, a bidder acting on behalf of j.a.pan's Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance purchased van Gogh's Sunflowers Sunflowers for $39.9 million. for $39.9 million.

Everything can hinge on a name. Rubens's Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents sold in 2002 for $76.7 million, at this writing the fourth highest price ever paid for a painting. For over two centuries, the sold in 2002 for $76.7 million, at this writing the fourth highest price ever paid for a painting. For over two centuries, the Ma.s.sacre Ma.s.sacre was thought to be the work not of Rubens but of one of his followers. The family that inherited it in 1923 disliked it so-it depicts infants torn from their weeping mothers and slammed against the ground-that they tried, unsuccessfully, to sell it. Finally they lent it to an Austrian monastery, where it hung for decades in a dim corridor, ignored. Only in 2002, when the eighty-nine-year-old owner tried once again to find a buyer, was the painting properly identified. In the monastery, the painting hung in such darkness that the Sotheby's specialist who attributed it to Rubens had to wield a flashlight. was thought to be the work not of Rubens but of one of his followers. The family that inherited it in 1923 disliked it so-it depicts infants torn from their weeping mothers and slammed against the ground-that they tried, unsuccessfully, to sell it. Finally they lent it to an Austrian monastery, where it hung for decades in a dim corridor, ignored. Only in 2002, when the eighty-nine-year-old owner tried once again to find a buyer, was the painting properly identified. In the monastery, the painting hung in such darkness that the Sotheby's specialist who attributed it to Rubens had to wield a flashlight.

When the simple equations of supply and demand run head-on into the complexities wrought by human psychology, they emerge from the collision bent and twisted. High prices in the art world, for instance, may serve not as a deterrent but a lure. Record-setting prices, one New York dealer explained, work "like a magnet." For buyers, high prices confirm the value of the objects they are chasing. For sellers, high prices draw new objects to market. In the apt words of the late art dealer Harold Sack, "Money is honey."

The result is topsy-turvy bragging, where people boast not about unearthing a bargain but about spending a fortune. One New York art dealer claimed not long ago to know people who wanted to spend $1 million on a painting and weren't particular about which one. The discovery of this quirk was perhaps the key to the success of the most famous art dealer of all, Joseph Duveen, whose glory days were the early years of the twentieth century. "Duveen's clients preferred to pay huge sums," his biographer observed, "and Duveen made them happy."

Such tackiness is not reserved for rubes. In 1967, when the National Gallery in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., purchased Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of Ginevra Benci Ginevra Benci for $12 million, the museum's director, John Walker, pointed out that "the cost per square inch of paint... is the greatest in the history of collecting." for $12 million, the museum's director, John Walker, pointed out that "the cost per square inch of paint... is the greatest in the history of collecting."

For similar reasons, stolen-and-recovered paintings tend to command higher prices after their return than before. What endors.e.m.e.nt could be more sincere, after all, than someone's decision that a painting deserved stealing?

The great boom in art crime came with the skyrocketing art prices of the 1980s and 1990s. In 1961, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art paid $2.3 million for Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, the price set a record that more than doubled the previous high. Time Time magazine put the painting on its cover, and the story of the "million-dollar Rembrandt" dominated the front page of the next day's magazine put the painting on its cover, and the story of the "million-dollar Rembrandt" dominated the front page of the next day's New York Times New York Times.

Thirty years later, at the peak of the most recent art frenzy, $1 million would seem like small change. On the evening of May 15, 1990, in an overflowing room buzzing with chatter in half a dozen languages, Christie's auctioneer opened the bidding for van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet Portrait of Dr. Gachet at $20 million! From there, bids increased at $1 million increments. Five minutes later, the portrait sold for $82.5 million. Two days after that, Sotheby's auctioned off $300 million worth of paintings in an hour. at $20 million! From there, bids increased at $1 million increments. Five minutes later, the portrait sold for $82.5 million. Two days after that, Sotheby's auctioned off $300 million worth of paintings in an hour.

Even the pros seemed awed by the new world that had emerged. "We have moved into a whole new set of prices," Christopher Burge, the president of Christie's in the United States, told the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post. "A $1 million sale once was thought scandalous and shocking-then it was $2 million, then $5 million, then $40 million. The $2 million Renoir has become a $6 million picture. The $6 million Renoir is now worth $20 million, and the most important of his paintings would go for a lot more." (In 1868 Renoir traded a portrait for a pair of shoes.)*

An economics writer for the New York Times New York Times could only shake his head and marvel. "Great Impressionist canvases, worth as much as Rolls-Royces in the 1970s," he wrote in February 1990, "now trade at parity with Boeing 757s." could only shake his head and marvel. "Great Impressionist canvases, worth as much as Rolls-Royces in the 1970s," he wrote in February 1990, "now trade at parity with Boeing 757s."

Through the rest of the 1990s, prices dropped from those record highs. Then, in the spring of 2004, another symbolic barrier fell. In an auction at Sotheby's in New York City, in front of a large and buzzing crowd, an anonymous bidder purchased Pica.s.so's Boy with a Pipe (The Young Apprentice) Boy with a Pipe (The Young Apprentice) for more than $100 million. The painting depicts a young boy dressed in blue, wearing a garland of red roses. Pica.s.so painted it at age 24, in 1905. His world-renowned paintings would come later. for more than $100 million. The painting depicts a young boy dressed in blue, wearing a garland of red roses. Pica.s.so painted it at age 24, in 1905. His world-renowned paintings would come later. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Les Demoiselles d'Avignon dates from 1907, for example, dates from 1907, for example, Girl Before a Mirror Girl Before a Mirror from 1932; from 1932; Guernica Guernica from 1937. from 1937. Boy with a Pipe Boy with a Pipe-"a pleasant, minor painting," in the words of one Pica.s.so scholar-is not of that rank.

But unlike Pica.s.so's masterpieces, which belong to museums, Boy with a Pipe Boy with a Pipe was available to anyone who could meet the price. The bidding opened at $55 million and rose, for eight minutes, in $1 million increments. It pa.s.sed $60 million, then $70 million, then $75 million. At $80 million, a new bidder joined in. In the end, the anonymous winner paid $104.1 million. was available to anyone who could meet the price. The bidding opened at $55 million and rose, for eight minutes, in $1 million increments. It pa.s.sed $60 million, then $70 million, then $75 million. At $80 million, a new bidder joined in. In the end, the anonymous winner paid $104.1 million.

News like that draws crowds, and the crowds are not composed entirely of solid citizens.

19.

Dr. No Whenever a painting with a value like a Boeing 757 vanishes-whenever thieves steal a Rembrandt or a van Gogh or a Vermeer or another "name" painting-the police respond as if they were reading from a script. A beleaguered police chief approaches a bouquet of microphones and sadly delivers the news that yet another masterpiece has been stolen to satisfy the whim of an art-loving recluse. On Millennium Eve, 2000, to cite one of dozens of examples, a thief stole a $4.8 million Cezanne from Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum and disappeared into the crowd partying outside. "The theory we're going on is that it was stolen to order," the police quickly announced. "We think an art lover from somewhere in Britain or the world probably earmarked the painting for their collection and hired a professional thief to steal it."

The press laps it up. Who are the reclusive art lovers commissioning these thefts? The news accounts seem to have in mind a figure out of a Sherlock Holmes story: Late at night in a castle hideaway, a criminal mastermind-who happens to be an art connoisseur-summons a servant to bring a gla.s.s of brandy, give the logs in the fireplace one final poke, and then shut the library doors behind him. Then, finally alone, the reclusive genius strides toward a wall that is empty but for an object about two feet by three feet, concealed by a pair of green velvet curtains like those on a miniature stage. The curtains are closed, as they nearly always are, but now the silent figure in the smoking jacket draws them apart. Then he steps back and gazes contentedly at a painting instantly recognizable all over the world but destined never again to be seen outside this room.

Is the stolen-to-order theory true? Brandy and smoking jackets aside, it certainly seems seems compelling. We know that stolen masterpieces can never find legitimate buyers. We know that masterpieces are stolen regularly nonetheless. We know that many disappear forever. compelling. We know that stolen masterpieces can never find legitimate buyers. We know that masterpieces are stolen regularly nonetheless. We know that many disappear forever.

We know, too, that a person who would spend $5 million or $10 million on any painting, stolen or not, is different from you or me. Ardent collectors talk as if they are obsessed, caught in the grip of an urge to acquire that holds them helpless. J. P. Morgan, the financier who reigned over American industry at the dawn of the twentieth century, acc.u.mulated treasures on so great a scale and in such variety-two Gutenberg bibles, acres of old masters, the last surviving ma.n.u.script copy of Gutenberg bibles, acres of old masters, the last surviving ma.n.u.script copy of Paradise Lost- Paradise Lost-that the art historian Bernard Berenson compared his collection to "a p.a.w.nbroker's shop for Croesus."

According to one biographer of newspaper tyc.o.o.n William Randolph Hearst, "it was understood everywhere that he could not take a normal view toward art, could not appraise a piece according to cold market value, set a top price and stick to it. When he bid for something, it was seldom with a hard-headed take-it-or-leave-it att.i.tude, but with the idea that he must must have it. The thought of losing a piece to another was sheer anguish. He was aware of his own weakness, but powerless to correct it." have it. The thought of losing a piece to another was sheer anguish. He was aware of his own weakness, but powerless to correct it."

J. Paul Getty, despite his miserliness, confessed himself "incurably hooked" and "an addict" when it came to art. An entry from his diary echoes the "and this time I mean it" tone of a smoker in the grip of a three-pack-a-day habit. "I think I should stop buying pictures," Getty wrote. "I have enough invested in them. I am also stopping my buying of Greco-Roman marbles and bronzes. I'm through buying French furniture. My mind is set. I am not going to change it."

The next words in Getty's diary are: "The best laid schemes ..."

And it is not merely that collectors in general are obsessed; art collectors in particular are at more risk than others of losing their bearings and vanis.h.i.+ng into the stratosphere. Prices of luxury items like Ferraris and diamond necklaces can reach dizzying heights, but with art almost any price can be justified, because a work of art is an object virtually without peer. Buy a yacht, on the other hand, and someone else can always buy an identical one.

The point is not to deny a family resemblance among, say, van Gogh's sunflowers, but simply to note the difference between that similarity and the near-ident.i.ty of such a.s.sembly-line objects as Ferrari cars. "Imagine how frenzied the world would be," the art critic Robert Hughes has written, "if there were only one copy of each book in the world." The art world is is that frenzied and strange a place. that frenzied and strange a place.

When the Getty Museum bid $50 million for Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks Madonna of the Pinks, in 2002, the art dealer Richard Feigen hailed the offer as "exactly what the Getty ought to be doing. It's very smart to convert a bunch of pieces of green paper into a masterpiece. The green paper proliferates. The masterpieces evaporate."*

Joseph Duveen, the legendary art dealer, made his fortune with the identical sales pitch. Duveen specialized in selling old masters to new money. Henry Frick, J. R Morgan, Andrew Mellon, and the other tyc.o.o.ns who dominated the American skyline in the early twentieth century all relied utterly on his guidance. "Art is priceless," Duveen would rhapsodize, as a client reached for his checkbook, "and when you pay for the infinite with the finite, you're getting a bargain."

When items are too rare to go around, economists point out, the mere fact of that rarity may make them desirable. "Scarcity value," the economists call it, and it can kick in even if an object has little else in its favor. A six-year-old taunting her brother by chanting "it's mine and you can't have it" has mastered the principle.

Great art has immense scarcity value (and visual splendor besides). But scarcity and beauty are only part of the lure. It is not simply that there are fewer than three dozen Vermeers and there will never be another. A painting has an allure that even other one-of-a-kind creations cannot match, because a person who buys a painting can own it-can possess it exclusively-in a way he could never own a novel, a poem, or a symphony. The difference is that, in an important sense, anyone who picks up a dog-eared, paperback Shakespeare owns something every bit as good as an original Shakespearean ma.n.u.script. The glory of Shakespeare lies in the words he conjured up, not in the handwriting in which he set those words down. Shakespeare's penmans.h.i.+p is irrelevant to his art; Rembrandt's way with a brush is is his art. his art.*

The most expensive words in any language, J. P. Morgan once said, are unique au monde unique au monde-"the only one in the world." For some collectors, the thrill of owners.h.i.+p so outweighs all other considerations that, once they have acquired their treasures and hidden them away, they themselves never look at them again. In seventeenth-century France, for example, one insatiable book collector, Marshall d'Estrees, gathered and immediately stashed away 60,000 volumes, every one of which remained unopened until after his death.

How natural to a.s.sume, then, that when a masterpiece vanishes, a real-life Dr. No-a collector as maniacal as Morgan or Hearst or d'Estrees but not as honest-has commissioned the theft. Robert Hisc.o.x, a prominent insurance broker and art collector, believes that most stolen paintings end up on a rich man's wall. "It really is a disease, and you want it almost as much as a heroin addict wants heroin," he says. "And there are certain people who want to own own it. Museums are just frustrating-you can go and look, but you can't own it. That hunger is not only felt by good, honest, A-l individuals. It can be felt throughout society, and especially by villains. And why on earth bother to buy it when you can steal it? it. Museums are just frustrating-you can go and look, but you can't own it. That hunger is not only felt by good, honest, A-l individuals. It can be felt throughout society, and especially by villains. And why on earth bother to buy it when you can steal it?

"People say, 'But the only point of owning art is to show off,' "Hisc.o.x continues. "That is absolute paramount rubbish absolute paramount rubbish. There are paintings in my bedroom that no one ever sees, and never will see, and I have no interest in showing my friends or the great British public. I think a villain who's stolen a painting and has, you know, Goya's Portrait of Wellington Portrait of Wellington sitting in his dressing room, would absolutely get a thrill from that. A greater thrill than just owning the Goya, the fact that he'd nicked it." sitting in his dressing room, would absolutely get a thrill from that. A greater thrill than just owning the Goya, the fact that he'd nicked it."

Even many legitimate buyers of the world's most expensive paintings hide their trophies away forever, off-limits to all eyes but their own. Often the biggest purchases at auctions are cloaked in secrecy; the bidding is done by an agent on behalf of a buyer whose ident.i.ty is never revealed. That is a modern development. In the Gilded Age, for example, tyc.o.o.ns gloried in flaunting their art collections, much as Donald Trump flaunts his buildings today. If consumption could not be conspicuous, what was the point?

A century before the Gilded Age, Adam Smith made a similar observation as if he were citing a universal truth. "With the greater part of rich people," he wrote, "the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which n.o.body can possess but themselves." But today's tyc.o.o.ns are different, the historian Ben Macintyre observes, and "the owners.h.i.+p and whereabouts of the four most expensive paintings in the world are all unknown."

The four paintings Macintyre had in mind, lost to everyone but their owners, are van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet Portrait of Dr. Gachet, which last sold for $82.5 million; Renoir's Ball at the Moulin de la Galette Ball at the Moulin de la Galette, $78.1 million; Rubens's Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents, $76.7 million; and van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist Without His Beard Portrait of the Artist Without His Beard, $71.5 million. Since Macintyre wrote, a new painting, Pica.s.so's Boy with a Pipe (The Young Apprentice) Boy with a Pipe (The Young Apprentice), has taken first place at $104.1 million. Its buyer, too, is anonymous.

Until the early 1990s, the owners.h.i.+p of the two most expensive paintings was was known. Then, in two hectic days in May 1990, a j.a.panese industrialist named Ryoei Saito bought both known. Then, in two hectic days in May 1990, a j.a.panese industrialist named Ryoei Saito bought both Gachet Gachet and and Moulin de U Galette Moulin de U Galette, packed them inside plywood boxes, and hid them away in a climate-controlled vault near Tokyo. Over the course of the next few years, Saito went bust-or nearly-and was found guilty in a corruption scandal. In 1996 he died of a stroke. Amid the tangle surrounding Saito's financial affairs, no one has yet unraveled the mystery of the whereabouts of his two masterpieces. (Saito had said that he wanted Gachet Gachet cremated and buried with him, but he reportedly changed his mind.) cremated and buried with him, but he reportedly changed his mind.) If billionaires whose t.i.tle to their paintings is beyond question see fit to lock their art up where the world will never see it, is it conceivable that a billionaire thief might do the same?

Venture a word of any of this to Charley Hill, and-depending on how energetic he happens to be feeling-he will withdraw into a prolonged and angry sulk or explode in a Rumpelstiltskin-style tirade. The whole Dr. No scenario is "Hollywood horses.h.i.+t," "b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," "a complete and unmitigated load of c.r.a.p." To broach the subject, as Hill sees it, is to proclaim, "I'm an ignoramus and I'm here to waste your time."

Hill's anger is not a simple matter of reflex disbelief. The media's constant invoking of hideaways lined with old masters infuriates him because it invests "sc.u.mbags" with glamour. More maddening still, Hill sees the a.s.sumption that stolen masterpieces are destined for the secret galleries of untouchable criminals as providing the police with a perfect excuse for giving up on art crime. Why spend time and money in a doomed search for paintings that are locked away forever? It is, after all, only art.

Most of the experts share Hill's scorn of the stolen-to-order claim, but in one crucial way, their opinion is beside the point. Hill and his peers may not believe in the existence of art-loving billionaires willing to pay top-dollar for a stolen van Gogh, but what's important is that the thieves do believe it.

And as long as they do, masterpieces will continue to disappear.

20.

"This Is Peter Brewgal"

Great paintings will disappear, as well, because when thieves steal great art some of the l.u.s.ter of the masterpieces spills onto the thieves themselves. This gilt by a.s.sociation is almost entirely undeserved, but the notion of the das.h.i.+ng thief is so appealing that it thrives even without any evidence to support it. Art thieves look like Pierce Brosnan or Sean Connery, Hollywood tells us; they are an "elite, artsy SWAT brigade," the Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune informs its readers, a "highly daring and, let's admit it, cultured coterie of malefactors." informs its readers, a "highly daring and, let's admit it, cultured coterie of malefactors."

In real life, nearly all art thieves fall into two categories, both of them decidedly nonelegant. Either they are b.u.mblers out of an Elmore Leonard novel or gangsters like Martin Cahill. The gangsters are far more dangerous, but the two categories can bleed into one another as stolen paintings pa.s.s from criminal to criminal.

"The commercial dealings can become quite labyrinthine," says Mark Dalrymple, an insurance investigator based in London who specializes in art cases. "It needn't always be a cash purchase. The thief might swap the painting for a s.h.i.+pment of drugs, or for a share in another, bigger deal. Or the thief might owe owe 10,000 and say, 'Take the picture and we'll clear the debt.' " 10,000 and say, 'Take the picture and we'll clear the debt.' "

Dalrymple is a thin man with a world-weary manner and deep bags under his eyes. He peeks out at the world from inside a swirl of cigarette smoke and delivers his judgments in a syrupy drawl that seems to imply that humanity is, for all its foibles, undeniably amusing.

"I have great respect for many criminals," he remarks. "They're very clever, very clever indeed, very streetwise in their dealings with their colleagues. They'll buy a mobile phone and throw it away the next day [to foil eavesdroppers]. They can smell your standard undercover cop a mile away.

"But when it comes to these big-time paintings, they smell money and a profit and they get a hard-on, as we say"-Dalrymple raises his eyebrows as if to acknowledge the lapse in taste-"and the streetwise approach goes right out the window.

"These people come up with the most extraordinary ideas," Dalrymple marvels. "They'll think they can sell the painting to a drug baron in South America, or to a friend who's in with some mafioso in Miami. Or they'll think, Ah, well, I know some Albanians who like this sort of stuff, and they've got some handguns. Maybe we can do a deal.' Or they might try to ransom the painting back to the original owner. Or keep it for a year and then see if they can collect from the insurance company. Or they may be in it for the reward."

Dalrymple affects a tough guy accent. "'If they're offering 100,000 quid, I'll tell 'em where it is, and I get the reward, and they get their bleedin' painting back.'

"Even so," Dalrymple continues, "many of them get away with it. Along the line, there are are people making money. There are always going to be people making money. That's why they do it." people making money. There are always going to be people making money. That's why they do it."

Cops and their allies, like Dalrymple, prefer the b.u.mblers to the pros. They love to swap tales of hapless amateurs, especially if they are meeting colleagues from far-off jurisdictions. Sitting over drinks in crowded bars, the cops play can-you-top-this. They tell true stories like the one about the Los Angeles thief who, in 1998, stole a $10,000 abstract metal sculpture and ended up selling it to a sc.r.a.p dealer for $9.10.

The police tell the stories for laughs, but the laughter is bittersweet because the underlying message is so dismaying. Art theft is such an easy game and the penalties for getting caught are so low, the stories make plain, that the most hopeless sap can play. Take Anthony Daisley, who, one fine December day in 1991, staggered into the Birmingham [England] Museum and Art Gallery almost too drunk to walk. He pulled Henry Wallis's Death of Chatterton Death of Chatterton off the wall, stuck the six-inch-by-ten-inch painting under his arm, and reeled out the door with a 75,000 prize. (The museum had recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on electronic security, but the alarms were designed mainly to foil thefts at night, when the building was empty.) Another museum visitor saw the theft and called a guard, but it was too late. off the wall, stuck the six-inch-by-ten-inch painting under his arm, and reeled out the door with a 75,000 prize. (The museum had recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on electronic security, but the alarms were designed mainly to foil thefts at night, when the building was empty.) Another museum visitor saw the theft and called a guard, but it was too late.

Daisley pulled himself aboard a pa.s.sing bus and showed his fellow pa.s.sengers the painting. He had just stolen it, he explained, and now it could be theirs for a mere 200. The thief asked where the bus was headed. "Selly Oak," he was told. That was no place for him, Daisley cried out, because his ex-wife lived there. He stumbled off the bus, taking his painting with him. Five days later, police following up a tip found the stolen painting hidden in a house in Birmingham. A judge let Daisley off with a warning to stay out of trouble for twelve months, and the head of the Birmingham Museum issued him a public invitation to come back and visit the art he so clearly admired.

Charley Hill relishes such stories, partly because they b.u.t.tress his view that the human race is composed largely of ninnies but mainly because he takes personal offense at the widespread belief that art thieves are masterminds who spend their days plotting elaborate heists. "The thieves who steal works of art," he says, "were usually stealing hubcaps a few years earlier."

Hill's hubcap remark was, in one 2 million case, the literal truth. In 1982 a thief ran out of London's Courtauld Inst.i.tute Galleries clutching Bruegel's Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery to his chest. (Bruegel produced a great many paintings, but in the nearly four and a half centuries since his death all but forty have been lost.) For the next eight years, the painting pa.s.sed from thief to thief. to his chest. (Bruegel produced a great many paintings, but in the nearly four and a half centuries since his death all but forty have been lost.) For the next eight years, the painting pa.s.sed from thief to thief.

Somehow it fell into the hands of four small-time crooks. Two were failed businessmen who had run into debt; a third stole cars and credit cards; the fourth stole hubcaps.

One of the four had stumbled on the Bruegel, but he'd had no idea that it was special, no inkling at first that here in his hands was the big ticket he and his mates had all been dreaming of. The painting is an odd one, quite unlike Bruegel's famous, sprawling, colorful depictions of everyday life. Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery is a small, somber work painted in is a small, somber work painted in grisaille grisaille, entirely in shades of gray. Christ and the other figures look almost like stone carvings. A layman might glance at the dark biblical scene and quickly pa.s.s by. "Our great fear during all those years," recalled the director of the Courtauld, "was that whoever had it would get bored of the whole thing and chuck it into a dustbin."