ABRAZEN thief stole a 96-year-old painting worth R100 000 from the SA
National Gallery yesterday morning. The small oil painting, Royal
Hotel, Dieppe by British artist Walter Sickert, was part of the
gallery's permanent collection.
Marilyn Martin, the gallery's director, said that at 11.10am, a young
man walked into the gallery and strolled around the rooms.
A few minutes later he went to the front security desk to ask about
other galleries in the area.
Security attendant Lucy Williams said she offered to give the man a
map showing other Cape Town galleries.
"When I was reaching for the drawer to take out the map, I noticed
something that looked like the back of a painting under the man's
jacket," said Williams.
The man calmly walked out of the gallery while Williams frantically
tried to find her colleagues.
Shamil Fakir, the security supervisor, was walking by at the time and
noticed Williams waving at him.
Fakir said: "She told me what she suspected and I went after the guy.
When I called out to him, he started running and I pursued him.
"While I was running after him, I was calling 10111 (the police
emergency number) on my cellphone but could not get through."
Fakir saw the man bend over some bushes in Government Avenue before
running into Adderley Street and disappearing in the crowd.
"I was hoping he had dropped the painting, but I only saw a knife
pouch. By that time I had lost him, but I was near the police station
so I went in and reported the robbery," said Fakir.
Martin said she was shocked by the "cheekiness" of the robbery.
"The man obviously knew what he wanted because the painting is very
small and easily concealable. It is valuable and was a gift to the
gallery from Britain. It has been here since 1927 and is
irreplaceable.
"The question now remains whether the man was acting as an individual
or was hired by a syndicate," said Martin.
Sickert's work had a good following in Britain and Europe and the
painting could be smuggled out of the country in a day, said Martin.
The painting had been on display in one of the two rooms where the
gallery's old and valuable collection is kept.
Two years ago, a French bronze sculpture was stolen from the same
room.
It was later recovered with the help of the public.
Martins said a closed-circuit camera had filmed the robber, including
the gold frame of the painting under his jacket.
"This painting means a lot to the gallery and we hope that the public
can help us again," said Martin.
ONE of Britain's leading heritage campaigners will accuse the
Government tonight of making a mess of the National Lottery grant
system.
In a speech at the Museum of London, marking the Museum of the Year
Awards, John Letts will ridicule the process that requires lottery
recipients to chase matching funding, making it almost impossible for
them to reach their objectives: "Many millennium projects are still
subject to this impossible target of matching the large initial
promise of a grant ... You cannot expect private sources of money
meekly to follow suit."
Mr Letts, founding chairman of National Heritage, says that many
projects will fall by the wayside and, for those that survive, life
has been made uncertain in the extreme. He concludes: "After the first
five years of the National Lottery, most museums are worse off, not
better".
The Maritime Museum at St Helier, Jersey, and the House of Manannan,
part of the Manx Museum, will be named winners of the National
Heritage/NPI Museum of the Year Award.
AN ARTIST could have earned up to UKP: 100,000 forging paintings as
part of a conspiracy to fool the art world, a Crown Court jury was
told yesterday. John Myatt was appearing as a witness for the
prosecution at the trial of John Drew, who is said to have
masterminded a plot to forge paintings by celebrated modern artists.
Mr Drew, 50, of Reigate, Surrey, denies one count of conspiracy to
defraud between 1986 and 1996 and also pleads not guilty to charges
of false accounting, forgery, theft and using a false instrument with
intent. The Crown claims that he made a fortune by selling Mr Myatt's
work as genuine masterpieces with the help of bogus provenances
planted in museum archives. John Bevan, QC, for the prosecution,
alleged that Mr Drew not only enjoyed the money he made from his
dishonesty, but took an intellectual delight in fooling one victim
after another. Mr Myatt, 53, from Sugnall, Stafford, who has admitted
a charge of conspiracy to defraud, told the jury at Southwark Crown
Court in South London that he fell for the flattery of Mr Drew, whom
he met in 1986 after advertising for commissions in Private Eye. He
said that, over "long, long lunches", Mr Drew spoke at length of his
background, boasting of links with the intelligence community and of
rubbing shoulders with Margaret Thatcher.
Mr Myatt said he paid rapt attention to what Mr Drew was saying and,
to begin with, he had no suspicion that anything was amiss and
thought he was carrying out work to help to decorate Mr Drew's home.
That later changed when, he told the court, Mr Drew asked him to
start painting in the style of modern artists.
During the ensuing years until 1996 he produced pastiches of
Giacometti, Sutherland, Dubuffet, Bissiere, Chagall, Le Corbusier,
Schlemmer, De Stael, Matisse and others. Initially he said he was
paid between UKP: 150 to UKP: 250 for each piece, but that he was
later put on to a percentage, with some of the cash being paid into a
Swiss bank account. Mr Myatt said that, in total, he probably
received "about UKP: 50,000 ... I don't know .fs2.. it could have
been twice that or less".
In the dock with Mr Drew is Daniel Stoakes, 52, of Exeter, who denies
two counts of conspiracy to defraud.The trial continues today.
