Famous Art Thefts In The History

The paintings and other artistic works are valuable assets. Rich people are willing to buy famous paintings for millions of dollars. So, art thieves are constantly try to steal the famous artworks. Even though it is very difficult to sell the stolen artworks, thieves are taking risk to steal them. Here, we will see few of the famous art thefts in the history. 

(Picture Courtesy: Mona Lisa from Pixabay. Pictures of museum wall without Mona Lisa and Vincenzo from Wikipedia)

Mona Lisa 

The most popular art theft of all time is the theft of Mona Lisa painting from the Louvre Museum of Paris. The painting was stolen on August 21, 1911. The Italian thief, Vincenzo Peruggia just walked in to the museum wearing a white smock similar to the Louvre workers and stole the painting. He hid the painting in his Paris apartment for two years. After two years, he was caught while trying to sell the painting to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. In the investigation, he confessed that he wanted to bring the painting to its native country. In Italy, he was praised as a hero for his ‘patriotic act’. He was sentenced for one year and 15 days but served only seven months in the jail. After this theft only, Mona Lisa became very famous. 

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft

The biggest art heist in the history was happened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on March 18, 1990. 13 art works including 8 paintings, 3 drawings and two artifacts were stolen. The stolen art works are worth of $500 million. On the day of the theft, two thieves in police uniform knocked the door of the museum at 1:24 am. They told the security guard, Richard Abath, that they were came to investigate a disturbance at the museum. When Abath allowed them inside the museum, thieves handcuffed him and the second security guard. They tied both the guards with duct tape. 

(Picture of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum from Wikipedia)

They stole the art works of Vermeer, Rembrandt, Flinck, Manet and Degas. When they could not able to take the paintings along with frames off the wall, they cut the canvases and broke the frames. One of the mysteries of this heist is the choice of the paintings they stole. They left other famous paintings in the museum. The FBI thinks the heist was carried out by the criminal organization from mid-Atlantic and New England.

Till date, no one related to the theft was arrested and no art works were recovered. The FBI investigated several people including the security guard Abath. The museum has announced $10 million reward for information about the heist. If you know any information regarding those thieves, please contact the museum. 

Perfect heist of ‘View of Auvers-sur-Oise’

When the world was celebrating the birth of new millennium on December 31, 1999, amidst the noise of the fireworks, a movie style heist was carried out at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford. The unknown ‘professional’ burglar entered the museum from the roof using rope. He blasted off the smoke canister and used a fan to spread the smoke that covered the closed-circuit cameras. There were paintings of Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet and Monet in the museum. But the burglar was there to steal a £3m worth painting ‘View of Auvers-sur-Oise’ by Paul Cézanne. The burglar stole the painting and left the museum through the roof within 10 minutes before the firefighters arrived. The painting and the burglar were not found yet.

(Pictures of Ashmolean Museum and 'View of Auvers-sur-Oise' painting from Wikipedia)

Two Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh

There is no wonder both the art lovers and the art thieves like the paintings of one of the best painters of all time, Vincent Van Gogh. According to Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, he had sold very few paintings during his life time. Nowadays, his paintings are sold for tens of millions of dollars. 

In 2002, despite the tight security in the Van Gogh Museum, the burglars broke the window and entered the museum through the roof. They stole two smallest paintings of Van Gogh in the gallery – ‘View of the Sea at Scheveningen’ and ‘Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen’. They stole them within 4 minutes.

(Pictures of Van Gogh Museum and stolen paintings from Wikipedia)

They sold the paintings to a head of a crime family, Raffaele Imperiale for €350,000 in 2003. One of the two burglars, Octave Durham was arrested in 2003 and verified with the DNA found at the crime scene. Another burglar was Henk Bieslijn. The extravagant lifestyle of the burglars alerted the police and led to their arrest. But the police could not able to get the information about the paintings from them. After 14 years, in 2016, when the Italian police was investigating a cocaine trafficking case, they found the stolen paintings near Naples. The paintings were undamaged and hidden behind a wall in a toilet of a farmhouse. 

3 Minutes Robbery – Kunsthal Museum, Rotterdam

Seven Romanians stole seven paintings from the Kunsthal Musuem of Rotterdam on October 16, 2012. The paintings included Monet’s ‘Waterloo Bridge’ and ‘Charing Cross Bridge’, Picasso’s ‘Tete d’Arlequin’, Gauguin’s ‘Femme devant une fenêtre ouverte’, Matisse’s ‘La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune’, De Haan’s Autoprotrait and Lucian Freud’s ‘Woman with Eyes Closed’. They stole €18m worth of paintings just in 3 minutes. They smuggled the paintings hidden inside the pillows to Romania. One of the thieves, Radu Dogaru hid those pillows in his mother’s house. In 2013, an ex-girlfriend of one of the thieves informed the police about the robbery. Panicked about the ongoing investigation, Dogaru’s mother burned all the paintings in a stove to save his son. Moreover, Dogaru boasted to sue the museum for the poor security that led them to rob the paintings easily. 

(Picture of Kunsthal Museum from Wikipedia)

Confessions of an Art Thief

Stéphane Breitwieser is the most notorious art thief in the history. Breitwieser is a Frenchman. He stole 239 artworks including paintings, jewelry, pottery, statuettes and other artifacts from 1995 to 2001. He stole them from 172 museums in France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium and Austria. He stole artworks to create his own personal collection. His girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklauss, was his partner in crime. She was on the watch when he was stealing the artworks. He kept all the stolen artifacts in his mother’s (Mireille Breitwiester) house in Mulhouse, France. He and his girlfriend were caught in 1997 in Switzerland while stealing a painting from a private collection. Switzerland gave him an eight-month suspended sentence. He was also prohibited to enter the country until 2000.

In 2001, he stole a centuries old bugle from the Richard Wagner Museum in Lucerne, Switzerland. Two days later, he came back to the same museum and spotted by a journalist, Erich Eisner. Eisner alerted the security guard. Finally, authorities arrested Breitwieser. The Swiss authorities took 19 days to get the international search warrant to search Mireille Breitwiester’s house in Mulhouse. It gave her enough time to shred the paintings and throw the artifacts in Rhone-Rhine Canal. Anyhow, around 110 artworks were recovered from her. 

He served 26 months in the jail. His mother served 18 months and his ex-girlfriend served 6 months in the jail. In 2011, 30 more stolen artworks were found and he got 3-year prison term in 2013.  He wrote an autobiography called ‘Confessions d’un Voleur d’art’ (Confessions of an Art Thief) about his art heists. 

Munch Museum Heist

Edvard Munch was an acclaimed Norwegian painter. His famous work is ‘The Scream’. He created four versions of ‘The Scream’ – two paintings and two pastels. It was stolen twice from the National Gallery and the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. 

(Pictures of Munch Museum and 'The Scream' painting from Wikipedia)

In 1988, a professional soccer player, Paal Enger, in Norwegian club Valerenga stole Munch’s ‘The Vampire’ painting. His extravagant lifestyle was observed by two of his teammates who were also policemen. They found that he was a thief and the police recovered ‘The Vampire’ from his home. He was sent to the jail till 1994. After released from the prison, some mysterious employer contracted Enger to steal ‘The Scream’ from the National Gallery. Enger and three other men stole ‘The Scream’ without any security problem. He even left a ‘thank you note’ on the wall that says ‘Thousand thanks for the bad security’.  Enger also published a newspaper birth notice for birth of his son with a message like ‘born with a scream’. Police got alerted and arranged a sting operation with the help of British art recovery expert, Tony Russell. Enger was finally arrested when he was making a ransom deal. This time he got six and a half years prison term.  

Another version of ‘The Scream’ was stolen on August 22, 2004 from the Munch Museum. Two hooded thieves threatened the museum staff and the visitors with a gun and escaped with two paintings, ‘The Scream’ and ‘Madonna’, in a car. The theft was captured by the museum’s CCTV cameras. There was a robbery carried out on April 5, 2004 in Norway. So, the police suspected whether there was a connection between the robbery and the art theft. They also suspected Enger. 

Two years later, in 2006, the two paintings were recovered with little damage. Three men were arrested regarding the heist and jailed for 4 to 7 years. 

Van Gogh’s Poppy Flowers

Van Gogh’s $50m worth painting, ‘Poppy Flowers’ was stolen twice from Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo, Egypt. It was first stolen on June 4, 1977 and found in Kuwait after 10 years. It was stolen again in 2010. The poor security arrangements at the museum was the reason for the theft. The painting is still missing and an Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris announced a $175,000 reward for the information regarding the painting. There is not much information available from the museum about these two thefts. 

(Pictures of Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum and stolen painting from Wikipedia)