Picasso Stolen, Found, Lost
In 1972 four paintings were stolen in broad daylight from the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. One of them was a Picasso, which has a dramatic life story that stretches well beyond this heist.
Worcester Art Museum Heist
In 1972 a man named Florian “Al” Monday hired two men to break into the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester Massachusetts. This museum is actually larger than both the Guggenheim and the Whitney in New York and it houses a very comprehensive collection of European and American paintings as well as pre-Columbian art. It was a good target for someone who wanted famous, expensive works.
On May 18, 1972, these two hired men entered the gallery, in the middle of the day. Broad daylight. The museum was filled with people, including some high school students on a class trip. Monday had decided on a midday heist because, in casing the joint in the weeks before the robbery, he found that daytime security was lacking and it was actually more of a risk to try to do this at night. So daytime it was. The men simply walked into the building and started taking their predetermined paintings off the walls and stuffing them into bags. Witnesses reported thinking that these men must have been workers at the museum but once the paintings were in their bags the two donned ski masks and made a swift exit. They obviously weren’t workers.
On their way out of the building, one of the guards on duty tried to stop and question them but one of the men pulled out a gun and shot him in the hip before making a speedy getaway in their waiting car. The guard ended up making a full recovery.
The main target of the heist was Rambrandt’s Saint Bartholomew but two works by Gauguin; Brooding Woman and Mademoiselle Manthey, and Picasso’s Mother and Child by a Fountain were stolen as well. Years later Monday said, “to an art lover, possessing a Rembrandt can be likened to winning the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the Stanley Cup all at once” (Cascone, 2016). It’s unclear if Monday specifically asked for the three other paintings but we know he absolutely wanted a Rembrandt to add to his personal collection. All four of these paintings were recognizable enough that they would never be able to be sold. Over the next few weeks the paintings were stored in a number of hiding spots, from Monday’s drop ceiling, to the trunk of a car, and even in the hayloft of a pig farm in Rhode Island.
However, the police were hot on the tails of the thieves. They had been openly bragging about the theft in bars around Worcester so the police had a ton of tips coming in. The same day that the theft occurred, May 18, the police located the getaway car behind Boynton Hall at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. More tips eventually lead them to arrest four men, Florian Monday, William Carlson, David Aquafresca, and Stephen Thoren, and charge them with the crime. To be clear, Monday is the mastermind and Carlson and Thoren were the two men in masks who took the paintings from the museum, while Aquafresca waited in the car as their getaway driver.
Eventually, through more tips and detective work all four paintings were recovered and were reinstalled at their home in the Worcester Art Museum.
Mother and Child by a Fountain
Maybe you thought I forgot that I told you this story is about a Picasso painting. Well, rest assured I didn’t, I just needed to give you the first part of the painting’s saga. I told you it was dramatic!
Mother and Child by a Fountain was painted by Pablo Picasso in 1901 and it captures his Blue Period very well as it is painted in monochromatic blue (duh), small in size, with loose brushwork. Apparently, at the time he painted it Picasso had a hard time selling this painting but in 1923 it was purchased by Schofield Thayer who had an impressive collection of over 450 pieces of modern art including works by Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Munch, Chagall, and more. He wanted to share this collection with the public so in 1931 he made a deal with the Worcester Art Museum and entrusted them to display his precious works. There was also an implied expectation that the collection would be left to the museum upon Thayer’s death.
So now, back in 1972, Mother and Child by a Fountain is back on display, along with its other stolen siblings, at the Worcester Art Museum, where it stayed for ten more years. Then in 1982, in a completely unexpected twist, it was removed. But this time the removal was legal.
But what happened?? A few decades earlier Thayer (the art collector who actually owned this painting) overheard a comment made by a museum worker saying that his collection was “an intellectual sewer” (Stolen Cavalier, 2014) and he took extreme offense. TBH I’d take offense too, that’s harsh. However, at the time he didn’t say anything to anyone about the comment. Instead, in an act of revenge he quietly changed his will, writing out the Worcester Art Museum entirely and instead bequeathing his collection to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Therefore, when Thayer died in 1982 his new will was revealed. This completely blindsided the Worcester Art Museum but they were forced to relinquish Mother and Child by a Fountain and all their other Thayer collection works to the Met. They tried to battle this in court but ultimately it was decided in the Met’s favour. Unfortunately, this act of revenge has caused Mother and Child by a Fountain to sit in storage at the Met for years, not on display, lost to the public. Which is actually the opposite of what Thayer originally wanted.
Works Cited
“2 Shoot a Museum Guard and Flee with 4 Paintings”. The New York Times. 1972. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/05/19/archives/2-shoot-a-museum-guard-and-flee-with-4-paintings-2-shoot-museum.html
Cascone, Sarah. “Notorious Massecheusits Museum Heist to Become Hollywood Movie”. ArtNet. 2016. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/stealing-rembrandts-worcester-art-museum-heist-movie-329250
Lewis, Danny. “The First Armed Heist in History is Being Made into a Movie”. Smithsonian Magazine. 2016. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/first-armed-art-heist-made-into-movie-180959998/
“Pablo Picasso Mother and Child by a Fountain: Stolen, Recovered, and Lost Again”. Stolen Cavalier. 2014. https://stolencavalier.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/pablo-picassos-mother-and-child-by-a-fountain-stolen-recovered-and-lost-again/