The Rescue Artist - Art Theft History and The Scream

Feb 8, 2011
Mary Rayme

The Rescue Artist - © Harper Perennial

When Edvard Munch's masterpiece is stolen from a museum in Norway, Charley Hill is the art detective on the case of the missing painting.

If you have a passing fancy in art theft and art crime and only want to read one book on the topic, I recommend The Rescue Artist - A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece, by Edward Dolnick.

The Stolen Scream

The Rescue Artist focuses on the famous art theft of Edvard Munch’s "The Scream", one version of which was pilfered from the National Gallery of Norway in Oslo in 1994. The theft of artwork took place before sunrise and was surprising easy in that the two thieves climbed a ladder, broke a window, got the painting, back down the ladder, and into two separate cars that sped away. "The thieves who captured "The Scream" were so cheeky that they left a postcard with the note, “Thanks for the poor security.”

With this famous art theft as the centerpiece of The Rescue Artist, Dolnick interweaves other fascinating stories of famous art thefts including:

5 old master paintings stolen from a museum in Paraguay in 2002
a Cezanne stolen from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England in 1999
Vermeer painting stolen from Russborough House in Ireland
The Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre in 1911
a Caravaggio stolen from a church in Sicily in 1969

Art Theft Statistics

One statistic that many art theft historians use is the one put forth by Interpol, which estimates that monetarily, art theft ranks third after illegal drugs and arms. I debate this statistic and suggest that reality is that stolen automobiles ($19 billion) human trafficking ($5-9 billion) come before art theft in terms of monetary value. Regardless of which statistic one believes, art theft is a multi-billion-dollar industry that feeds into other illegal activities such as money laundering, fencing, illegal drug and arms trade, and almost any crime you can imagine that involves organized crime.

Charley Hill - Art Detective

So who will rescue this prized painting from Norway, Edvard Munch’s "The Scream"? Our hero is Charley Hill, the most famous art detective in the United Kingdom, a former Fulbright scholar and cop. Dolnick goes out of his way to give us a portrait of Hill that reveals him to be part detective, part academic, part actor, and part bullshit artist.

The Rescue Artist also gives readers a biography of the artist Edvard Munch and explores the issues of why thieves steal art. Dolnick is a skilled writer who is able to pull off a sometimes wandering narrative that is fill of tangential information. This book is appropriate reading for the art lover, the true crime reader, and those fascinated with the dark world of art theft and museum thievery.