Would you steal a painting?
June 3 2014
Picture: Museo Prado
Following news that the man who stole a supposed (but not) Rembrandt from a French museum did it because he 'became obsessed' with the picture and felt compelled to own it, Jonathan Jones in The Guardian fesses up, and says he would do the same:
is it believable that he really was motivated initially by an obsession with this work of art?
Yes, it's believable. I can easily imagine being so obsessed with a painting that you feel compelled to steal it. Not this painting, though: I do not believe it to be an actual Rembrandt. But sure, I might be tempted by a real Rembrandt.
After all, the entire art world rests on its power to seduce and fascinate and obsess people, to make them covet it. Collectors are people who cannot bear to just see art in museums. They need it in their house. They get it (usually) in legal ways, by buying from galleries or at auction. Similarly, curators who work in public museums are driven to get physically close to art, to dedicate their working lives to being in close proximity to it. And writing about art is another way of taking possession of it.
On the other hand … writers share art with their readers. Curators care for it on the public's behalf. Only private collectors come close to the art thief in selfishness, yet even they bequeath works to museums or loan them to exhibitions.
Jones' dig at private owners' 'selfishness' is hardly unusual. But given that 80% of the UK's national collection of oil paintings is in storage at any one time, the surest way to make sure a good picture isn't seen is for it to be in a museum.
Anyway, if you could 'steal' a picture for, say, just a day, which would you chose, and why? I think I'd go for Van Dyck's intensely moving portrait of Martin Ryckaert.
Update: a reader writes:
I would happily steal The Guitar Player for a day.... Saw it last year at Vermeer and Music at the National Gallery, it sparkled and leapt off the wall.
Pretty much any Vermeer would do me.... Have never seen Girl With a Pearl Earring, could faint I think.
Update II - this reader has built up quite a collection:
Been playing that game for a few years now with an Italian colleague. But its what would you like to steal and keep, not return after a day.
So far I have Polynesia Air and Polynesia Sea by Matisse, an altarpiece by Rogier van der Weiden, Giorgione's Tempest, a small landscape by Patinir, assorted Roman glass from a cabinet at the Louvre, an etching and a drawing by Rembrandt (still making up my mind which ones), a photograph by Michael Kenna and an early 14th century Arabic Astrolabe built in Spain. I am currently thinking about acquiring an Anselm Kiefer piece.
Another reader writes:
That’s an almost impossible question, but I suspect I’d take Bellini’s portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan. The sense of calm and confidence the Doge has largely explains why it’s on the pinboard above my office desk.
Runner up probably goes to Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast, but my office is quite small….
Not sure I could deprive others of either of them for too long, though.
Update III - here's another ambitious list:
The Enchanted Castle by Claude, and the Gerrit van Honthorst , Saint Sebastian, and the Lady Colin Campbell by Boldini, if you needed to be beguiled by someone... late in the evening.
Update IV - here's a nice one:
Taking a bit of time out in between running the current GCE & GCSE exams and musing through the AHN website – one painting I would steal every time and I wouldn’t give back is the Van Dyck of ‘Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart’. I first saw this painting by accident years ago when the RA had a van Dyck and Soane exhibition and we had gone because my husband is an architecture freak. I love the arrogance and the complete self-assurance of both boys and it is sad to think that in just a few years they were both killed. I look at the boys wandering around outside the school gates (we are an all-girl school) and the way they strut and pose around the girls and 400 years on the young mean may dress differently but underneath they are all the same. When I am in London I often pop into the NG just to take another quick look at it.
One more painting I like is in Upton House – Thomas Hardy’s painting of the pirate William Augustus Bowles as an Indian chief. Nice looking chap to pin up on my board but slightly spoilt by my husband gleefully telling me he was nicknamed ‘Billy Bow Legs’ – slightly ruins the image!
