Pull up a chair and settle in because you’ll need a strong cup of tea for this story. We find ourselves in Oxford, home to the oldest university in the English-speaking world and Inspector Morse himself, in the Ashmolean Museum with its priceless collection of art and artefacts.
Younger readers may not remember the end of the millennium but for those who do, what were you doing on 31 December 1999? Were you partying like Prince? Were you gripped with the Y2K fear perhaps? Millennium fever had gripped the nation. It was after all a once in a generation event – well, actually, a once in about 40 generations event. I myself was standing atop Hamstead Heath watching the fireworks, wondering what the new year and the new millennium would bring us. Y2K was of course hyped up and with the exception of a few computers that put their time back to 1 January 1900, the world carried on spinning and the great technological breakdown didn’t happen.
The Ashmolean: scene of the crime
While most people up and down the nation were partying like it was 1999, because – well it was, one person was taking full advantage of the elaborate fireworks display in Oxford. At the stroke of midnight on 31 December 1999, the UK rang in the beginning of a new year and indeed a new century and millennium. Using the loud bangs and the noise of the crowds as a distraction, a lone burglar scaled the scaffolding outside the Ashmolean Museum of Art. The museum’s library was undergoing an extension at the time.
The Ashmolean Museum was built in the late 17th century to house a collection of curiosities gifted to the University by Elias Ashmole. Its current collection includes paintings by some of the finest artists such as Picasso, Constable, and Cezanne. It also houses other valuable items such as a Messiah Stradivarius violin, the only one in existence, and some more macabre and crime related collections such as the death mask of Oliver Cromwell and the lantern carried by a justice of the peace at the arrest of Guido Fawkes on the night of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. It is a museum where history comes alive.
The heist: a carefully planned crime
After that brief historical interlude, we now go back to our intrepid lone burglar. Carrying nothing but a small holdall containing a rope ladder, gloves, a portable fan, a smoke bomb, a scalpel and tape the thief quickly set to work, making light work of the ascent. Once they had reached the roof of the museum, they broke a skylight above the Hindley Smith Gallery. They threw the smoke bomb in and waited a few moments before dropping in the rope ladder and climbing down. Once inside the Gallery they took out the portable fan and set it so the smoke would blow around the museum impeding any museum guards, should they venture into the gallery, and to stop the CCTV cameras from seeing what was really happening inside.
Ignoring every other painting and a number of priceless artifacts, they headed directly for the ‘View of Auvers-Sur-Oise’ by Cezanne, which at the time was valued at £3mn and was considered to be an important example of the transition from early to mature Cezanne. With their eye on the prize, they took out the scalpel and carefully, with surgical precision, cut the painting from its frame. In a bizarre act of mindless vandalism, they proceeded to smash the empty frame on the floor, leaving behind scattered debris. Who said art heists were a gentleman’s crime?
The perfect getaway
Now all they had to do was exit undetected. By this time alarms were going off in the Gallery; surely the guards had been alerted. Putting the painting into the holdall they scaled the rope ladder back up onto the roof and climbed back down the scaffolding disappearing into the celebrating crowds. No one had noticed a thing. The heist had taken around an hour and a half, and the thief, and more importantly, the painting were gone.
The museum guards had been alerted by the alarms; however, they believed it was a fire so they had alerted the police and fire service, who turned up at 1:43am. Making their way into the Smith Gallery, they were astounded to find the smoke had completely dissipated and there was no sign of a fire. Instead, they were greeted by the remains of the smoke bomb and a flashing light on the wall where the Cezanne had once hung, a silent siren alerting them to the reality of what had really happened: the Cezanne was gone.
The investigation breeds speculation
The police, with the help of the director of the museum, quickly established that the Cezanne was the only painting missing. It was therefore assumed that the thief had stolen it to order for their own private collection or that of whoever they may have been working for. The theft was compared to the plot of the films The Thomas Crown Affair and perhaps more closely to that of Entrapment, in which the characters use the millennium celebrations as cover for an art theft. Had this film been the inspiration for the art heist?
Public perception certainly thought so and soon the rumours that these films had encouraged the art heist reached fever pitch. The editor of Trace, a magazine that covers stolen art, refuted such claims, stating that it had become much rarer for art heists to take place, due to a heightened awareness and increased security. In fact, the director of the museum is reported to have said: “Anyone offered this painting will walk over to the shelf and look it up in a Cezanne book, and would see where it belongs”, making it impossible to sell it on. This reinforced the police’s working hypothesis that the masterpiece was in the hands of a private collector.
Despite the value of the painting, like many other British museums, the Ashmolean had not insured it due to the high premiums required.
The trail goes cold
Thames Valley Police assigned only six of their officers to the investigation, and soon realised they did not have the manpower to handle such a case. A spokesperson went on record stating: “This is not a crime which is going to be solved overnight. We are more used to run-of-the-mill crimes. We need expertise.” They called in specialists from the art theft world and put customs officers at the harbours and airports on alert, just in case someone should try and get the painting out of the country. They contacted their counterparts in the FBI and the painting was placed on the top ten most wanted stolen art works in the world.
Phone lines were set up in the event of a ransom call. However, despite all this, the painting did not surface and no ransom call came. In January 2000 the police believed they were on the verge of recovering the painting after they received an anonymous call stating the painting had been spotted in a West Midlands pub. They rushed there to investigate but upon arrival they found that the paint was still wet. It was a false alarm; this painting was a copy of the original done by the landlord of the pub. Years went by and the police were completely stumped as to what had happened to the ‘View of Auvers-Sur-Oise’. The tip line was wound up as was the investigation. The trail had gone completely cold.
This remains the case to this day. The painting has never been recovered and the identity of the lone art thief has never been identified. The question remains: was the lone thief acting on the orders of others or do they in fact now own a painting worth over £5.5mn?
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