Art thieves thrive in times of economic hardship. Ooh, the sneaky little villains! Hanging’s not good enough for ’em, says Ivan Lindsay

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As the recession deepens and the losses filter out from the financials into the wider economy, unemployment is on the rise. In the same week in December as
Citicorp announced 50,000 layoffs, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that US unemployment rose to 6.7 per cent in November, with 533,000 job losses, bringing the total of US unemployed to 10.3 million, the highest level for fifteen years. Although the US is ahead of the rest of the world in this economic cycle, this is a pattern now being played out around the world. As a result, in addition to watching the value of their stocks, property and art fall, art collectors are now worrying whether their art might be vulnerable to a crime wave caused by mass unemployment, as happened in the Great Depression of the early 1930s.
Bobby Read, group fine-art underwriter of leading art insurer Hiscox, and Julian Radcliffe of the Art Loss Register (the world’s largest database of stolen art) concur that theft is accelerating as the recession deepens. Art theft can be broadly separated into two categories: the majority of cases involve mainly small-value items stolen by the drug-taking casual thief looking for easy items to sell, while, more rarely, high-value works are taken by the specialist fine-art and antiques thief. Small-time thievery increases in a recession and Radcliffe, who has 180,000 stolen items on his database, reports that he had already seen an upturn in October and November. Major art theft, however, is constant throughout the economic cycle, although Read refers to it as ‘the dumbest of art crimes’, because, in the electronic age, stolen paintings are difficult to sell, ransom demands are often unsuccessful and the crime attracts stiff penalties, usually involving a jail sentence.

Most of Hiscox’s art claims actually arise from when art works are in transit. They also have to contend with what Read refers to as the more sophisticated art crimes, such as the use of inflated insurance valuations as collateral for dodgy loans, fakes and forged paintings, smuggling without correct documentation, defective title on looted or stolen art works, and the modern reproduction
of ‘old’ furniture. In April 2008 The Sunday Times reported that Dennis Buggins, restorer to the leading London-based furniture dealer John Hobbs for the past 21 years, had come forth with photographic evidence that he had either faked or reconstructed many of the 1,875 pieces of furniture he handled for Hobbs. According to The New York Times, Hobbs’s clients such as David H Koch, Leslie H Wexner, Oscar de la Renta and Valentino are highly concerned.
Read recommends insurance as a good start because this usually involves taking a photograph of each item and warrants a survey of the home by the insurer’s surveyor. Although 80 per cent of households insure their art in the US, the figure drops to 60 per cent in the UK and 50 per cent in mainland Europe, as people are often worried about revealing what they have. Prices of art insurance have dropped from 1 per cent per annum in the 1970s, when art was first separated out from household contents policies, to between 0.1 per cent and 0.2 per cent today. A large collection with a client described by Read as ‘rich, honest and careful’ can even attract a premium of less than 0.1 per cent.
Art theft is as old as recorded history. Sargon II ruled Syria between 722 and 705 BC from his palace at Dur- Sharrukin near modern-day Mosul in Iraq and conquered most of the eastern Mediterranean, removing all religious artefacts, works of art, archives, military banners, musical instruments, armour, gold and silver. From one temple complex in the city of Musasir he removed one ton of gold, five tons of silver and 334,000 objects.
Nebuchadnezzar II (630–562 BC), King of Babylon, defeated all his neighbours and sacked Jerusalem in 587 BC, enslaving the Jewish population and emptying the Temple and plants to remind his homesick wife Amytis of her native land.

In the early Greek period respectful behaviour was usually adopted towards the statues of defeated foes so as not to offend the gods, but by the Hellenistic period wide-scale looting became prevalent. Dionysius of Syracuse (c. 430–367 BC) drove the Carthaginians out of Sicily before removing the gold mantle of Zeus at Olympia, as well as statues, gold objects and the gold crowns from statues’ heads.
Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) financed his campaigns by looting, and emptied the Persian treasuries of Susa, Sardis and Persepolis of over 4,500 tons of gold. During the Roman Empire looting was acceptable and expected during times of war; when a general had killed over 5,000 of the enemy, captured the king or queen of the vanquished, and had a sizable enough quantity of loot, he was allowed to parade his spolia through the streets of Rome in an officially sanctioned ‘Triumph’. During the Fourth Crusade, Doge Enrico Dandolo sacked and looted Constantinople in 1196, filling the treasury of St Mark’s Cathedral in Venice with Byzantine treasure, where it remains today. In the Renaissance, princes regularly raided.

Henry VIII emptied the English monasteries in the 1530s and the Spanish adventurers Francisco Pizarro and Hernán Cortés subjugated the Incan and Aztec empires before removing their gold and shipping it to Spain, although some was intercepted by Sir Francis Drake. In the 17th century, Sweden, under King Gustavus Adolphus, pillaged Northern Europe in the Thirty Years War before his daughter, Queen Christina, stole the collections of the late Rudolf II from Prague in 1649, including more than 1,000 paintings. Napoleon financed his campaigns by looting, and stole artworks from Egypt, Italy, Spain and Germany, trying to legalise his actions by forcing the vanquished to sign treaties such as the Treaty of Tolentino with the Vatican in 1797.
Between 1939 and 1945, Germany removed 592.48 tons of gold from the occupied countries and looted an estimated 20 per cent of Europe’s artworks. The art went to Hitler’s henchmen, such as Hermann Göring, who had over 1,500 paintings at his country estate Karinhall, or was earmarked for Hitler’s intended Führer Museum at Linz in Austria, for which 6,000 paintings were reserved. When the Russians started finding German depositories of art in salt mines and monasteries on their advance in 1944, Stalin ordered for it to be removed and over three million objects were brought to Russia, where they have remained, except for some items returned to Dresden (then under Russian control) in 1956. In 2000 the Russians passed a law in the Duma that states that as Russia did not start the war, and they lost 25 million people, they view the art they ‘rescued’ as compensation.
Art theft has continued at a steady rate since the Second World War. Interpol has had a dedicated department for art theft since 1947 and circulates a list of stolen artworks which now contains over 30,000 items. The 50 most valuable paintings are an astonishing selection, including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Caravaggio, Rubens, Picasso, Renoir, Van Gogh and Monet. The Art Loss Register’s list of 180,000 missing items includes 182 Warhols and 569 Picassos. Radcliffe calculates that about 3 per cent of works circulating on the art market at any one time have been stolen.
The masterpieces still outstanding have been described as the ‘Museum of the Missing’ and, though it is tempting to think there may be a mastermind enjoying his collection in a bunker somewhere, Radcliffe quickly scotches this favourite fantasy of both film and literature, saying that in over 2,000 cases he has investigated, only two were not stolen for financial gain. It is odd, however, how many masterpieces simply disappear into thin air.
Only 15 per cent of stolen artworks are recovered, so look after your art because if something is stolen the chances are that you will never see it again. With petty crime on the rise, it is also worth reviewing security arrangements. Police say that when they need to break into a house they often find a key within five metres of a front door, so it might be a good time to find a better place for that key under the flowerpot.
For more columns by Ivan Lindsay, visit spearswms.com

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