Eight Cézannes Stolen in Aix-en-Provence
In 1961 Aix, a city in the French region of Provence, was trying to attract tourists and make a name for itself as a destination. They had the idea to host art shows and traveling exhibitions as a way of getting their name out there. Little did they know what would happen when they did.
Summer 1961
In the summer of 1961 Aix-en-Provence, a then relatively unknown and non-touristy city in France, was gearing up to put themselves on the map both for tourists and artistically. They had landed a spot along the route of a traveling exhibition of Paul Cézanne paintings. They had hosted other exhibits before of works by artists like van Gogh and Matisse but this one was special because Aix is the hometown of Cézanne so they were proud to be hosting some of his works.
The weekend before the exhibition was set to open, the assistant mayor of Aix was interviewed on the radio. The interviewer asked him if he thought, in light of the recent Bastille Day robbery, when 57 canvasses from the nearby Municipal Museum in St. Tropez, that the Cézanne collection they were hosting might be in trouble or become the target for a robbery. The assistant mayor responded, “not at all, in Aix we have armed guards” (Time, 1961).
The exhibit was being hosted in a beautiful museum in Aix, they had 22 oil paintings, 19 watercolours, and 19 drawings on display all by Cézanne. But don’t for a second think that just because these were incredible works of art created by an artist from the very town they were being exhibited in AND they were being shown at an established gallery meant that security standards were high. Yeah. No.
In the middle of the night, one night in August thieves (it is unclear how many) scaled the garden walls surrounding the gallery and climbed the decorative ironwork on the facade of the gallery to access the first floor where the paintings were on display. There were spotlights on the outside of the building keeping it lit up all night and a police officer, or gendarme, on the ground floor of the building supposedly on watch but, of course, he fell asleep and slept through the entire incident. Additionally, once the thieves climbed in the window upstairs, the night guard didn’t react while eight paintings from the exhibition were neatly removed from the walls and the thieves vanished into the night. I’m not sure if this means the night guard was also asleep or if the thieves had weapons but either way, they had a pretty easy trip to the gallery and made off with their loot. 30 hours after that radio interview with the assistant mayor, the paintings were gone.
The Investigation
Of course the police were called once the robbery was over and the thieves were LONG gone. When they arrived they realized that the collective value of the stolen paintings was about $2,000,000. The show’s curator, Leo Marchutz was distraught when he found out saying, “Cézanne would be furious if he were alive” (Time, 1961).
What immediately stood out to police was the fact that the paintings that were targeted in this robbery had come from far and wide to be part of the exhibit, traveling from as far as Cardiff and St. Louis. They were also all famous works, including the famous The Card Players owned by the Louvre. What were these criminals planning to do with such a recognizable loot? Then it hit them, they were planning to hold the paintings for ransom. It was the only explanation that made sense, since, as we’ve discussed before, selling famous works of art is extremely difficult even on the black market and even having one in your home makes you a target so people are less inclined to touch them.
It turned out that the police were right. They and the Ministry of Culture in Aix were soon contacted by the so-called artnappers saying, “give us the money or we destroy the paintings” (Aixcentric, 2015). There isn’t a lot of information available about the exchanges between the police and the thieves but we do know that a deal must have been reached because there was a phone call on April 11, 1962 telling the police to look for a green Peugeot 404 near La Jolette (a neighbourhood in the French city of Marseille).
The police soon located the car, which had itself been stolen the week before, and inside were all eight missing paintings. This was an extremely embarrassing event for Aix and after all the paintings from the exhibition were returned to their homes it was a long time before major traveling exhibitions wanted to be shown in Aix.
An interesting footnote to this story is that once one of the paintings, The Artist’s Sister, was returned to its home in St. Louis they were doing some minor restoration work on it before it went back on display. The restoration team removed the glue on the back of the canvas and they were surprised to discover another painting on the back! The newly discovered painting is named The Peasant Model and the then director of the museum said, “it’s the biggest thing that’s happened to the St. Louis art museum in a long time” (Aixcentric, 2015). The canvas now lives in a swivel frame so people can see both sides of the canvas.
Works Cited
“The Night 8 Cézannes were Stolen in Aix”. Aixcentric. 2015. https://aixcentric.com/2015/03/02/the-night-8-cezannes-were-stolen-in-aix/
“Art: The Paintnappers”. Time Magazine. 1961. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,895672,00.html