Frans van Mieris Self-Portrait Theft
Wow, yet another one from the FBI’s top 10 art crimes list! Here we’ve got a Dutch master’s self-portrait stolen during visiting hours at a gallery in New South Wales, Australia. It is extremely valuable which makes it not super surprising that they haven’t found it yet.
Frans van Mieris the Elder
Let’s talk about van Mieris a little bit before jumping into the crime. He was a painter in the Dutch Golden Age and he specialized in portraits. As you can see they’re pretty masterful in the way they capture light and shadow, especially on materials such as glass and fabric.
van Mieris was born on April 16, 1635 in Leiden, the Netherlands. His father was a goldsmith, ruby carver, and diamond setter so van Mieris very quickly became fascinated by the sheen of jewelry and fabrics and stained glass. He trained to be an artist under Abraham Toorenvliet, who ran a school of design, and later with Gerard Dou and Abrahan van den Tempel. His work typically was small, he rarely chose to paint on panels that were larger than 12-15 inches. Sometimes you see paintings attributed to him that exceed this size but it’s likely those were actually painted by his son (and accomplished artist in his own right), Willem. Characteristic of his work is the small size and the shine and metallic polish.
His best works feature his subjects performing normal duties in their everyday lives, mostly the habits and activities of people in the wealthier classes who could afford to commission him, but sometimes he painted more modest individuals as well. He also frequently painted allegories, with one series of painting depicting the ‘kindred vices’ of smoking, drinking, and dicing.
His works currently live in museums and galleries around the world along with some of his son’s (Willem) and his grandson’s (Frans van Mieris the Younger) work, though neither of them really rivaled the talent of van Mieris the Elder.
The Crime at Hand
Alright, so now that we know a little about the artist let’s talk about what happened. Sunday June 10, 2007 was a rainy day, June is winter in Australia so with the cold, wet weather most people were wearing large coats as they walked around the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney Australia. One of the paintings in the collection was a tiny self-portrait by Frans van Mieris the Elder, the panel it’s painted on only measures 6x8 inches. The piece had been donated to the gallery in 1993 by philanthropist James Fairfax.
Some time between 10:00am and 12:30pm that day the painting disappeared. It would have been so easy to just pluck it off the wall and hide it inside a big coat. No one would have even noticed, and it would have been nearly impossible to catch the culprit because there were no security cameras in the ground floor gallery where the painting was kept and the security guards were patrolling in other rooms at the time. The painting was screwed to the wall but not alarmed so it would have just taken a minute to remove it and get away.
“The absence of electronic surveillance such as alarms or motion detectors meant any of the estimated 6000 people there that day could have walked out with the $1.4 million painting hidden in clothing or in a bag. “To be honest, I could slip it under your coat, and I think that's the sort of thing that's worth mentioning because it could have happened that way," Mr. Capon [the gallery’s director] said yesterday” (Morgan, 2007). The gallery alerted the police to the theft on Monday, after conducting an investigation to make sure that the painting wasn’t still in the building.
The police investigation has been heavily criticized in this case, let me just say that right off the bat. Not a lot of their techniques or collected evidence has been made public since technically this is an ongoing investigation but what we do know is it doesn’t seem like they did very much very quickly. They waited three days before alerting customs and ports that this painting had been stolen and it’s possible it may have already left the country by then. They also questioned gallery staff but this lead to no arrests. Soon the local police force contacted Interpol, the FBI, and Scotland Yard for help.
"The FBI experience is that approximately 80 percent of museum theft cases of art are inside jobs" (Sullivan, 2007). But even with this experience and knowledge, no arrests have been made. It’s widely speculated that the painting could have easily been taken out of the country and sold overseas but it’s just as likely that it’s still in Australia.
In 2008 the New South Wales Police ended the investigation after ‘looking into all aspects of the theft’. “This raised a few eyebrows internationally, since it is common for investigations to be scaled down, but unusual for them to be stopped altogether. The FBI in the USA still has the painting on its list of top ten art crimes” (Sheppard, 2022). It is pretty wild for them to not keep this open as a cold case.
In 2012, the New South Wales government asked an investigator to take a fresh look at the case. “He stated that he felt the painting was probably still somewhere in Australia. Crime researcher from James Cook University, Vicki Oliveri commented at the time that “A Cavalier [another word for self-portrait] has not only disappeared from the walls of the gallery, it has all but disappeared from memory save for some continued interest in the case which helps it maintain some level of public profile. This interest, however, does not come from Australia but rather, it comes from the United States’” (Sheppard, 2022).
So what do people think happened?
There are obviously lots of theories. The main thing being that this painting is likely in the hands of a private collector. The gallery’s director, Edmond Capon, said it would be almost impossible to sell, “firstly, because it's a small audience, it's a very specialised interest, and, secondly, because anyone who knows anything about van Mieris or 17th-century Dutch painting will know that painting and know it belongs in this building” (Morgan, 2007).
Art scholar and dealer Otto Naumann is a world expert in van Mieris paintings and he believes that there’s a 50-50 chance that the painting was destroyed. He says the chances of some billionaire having this painting and caring for it properly in secret are slim to none, when people have something important they want to tell others and he thinks it would have been uncovered by now. He also believes that if the painting still exists it may one day come to him, when someone needs help assessing its authenticity. “If somebody offers this Van Mieris to someone, any art dealer will know it's stolen," he says. "If they're offered it, they'll find out immediately. So it's worthless in a way. Any thief would think twice about trashing a Rembrandt, but the same courtesy may not extend to a postcard-sized Van Mieris” (Toohey, 2011).
So here’s hoping that someone reaches out to Naumann for an authentication soon and that it’s not the other side of the coin and the painting was destroyed when the thief realized that it is virtually worthless because it’s impossible to sell.
Works Cited
Morgan, Clare. “$1.4 Million Cavalier Art Theft Probably an Inside Job”. The Age. 2007. https://www.theage.com.au/national/1-4m-cavalier-art-theft-probably-an-inside-job-20070615-ge54vx.html
Sheppard, Felicity. “‘A Cavalier (Self-Portrait)’ by Frans van Mieris”. Keystone Underwriting. 2022. https://www.keystoneunderwriting.com.au/articles/9-a-cavalier-self-portrait-by-frans-van-mieris/
Sullivan, Rohan. “Van Mieris’ A Cavalier Stolen from Australian Gallery”. The Houston Chronicle. 2007. https://www.chron.com/entertainment/article/Van-Mieris-A-Cavalier-stolen-from-Australian-1802039.php
Toohey, Paul. “Aussie Link to Stolen Masterpiece”. The Courier Mail. 2011. https://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/aussie-link-to-stolen-masterpiece/news-story/98cd0fd124a7b07d4e35d795312b0228