It’s an art heist, Jim ... but not as we know it!
Oscar winners Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren are in final negotiations to star in a film about a stolen painting — and a crime that gripped the nation.
in the summer of 1961, Francisco de Goya’s celebrated 1812 portrait of a victorious Duke of wellington was stolen — just 19 days after it had been put on display at the national Gallery.
alerts were posted at seaports and airports around the globe. scotland Yard asked interpol and the FBi to check on highly placed sources in the art world in case the painting was being auctioned on the black market.
a £5,000 reward was offered and the hue and cry continued until an anonymous letter was sent to a newspaper, demanding that £140,000 (the painting’s worth at the time) be donated to charity. Further correspondence was sent to the Daily Mirror declaring: ‘The Duke is safe, his temperature cared for, his future uncertain.’
The theft even featured in the first 007 film, Dr. no. The Bond baddie had the portrait of wellington propped on an easel in his lair. sean connery walked in, glanced at it, and muttered: ‘so there it is.’
Unfortunately, back in the real world, the authorities had no idea where the national treasure was. not, that is, until June 1965, when a letter arrived at the Mirror, along with a left luggage ticket for Birmingham new street station. The Goya canvas was found there, rolled up inside a locked box.
But who had taken it remained a mystery until Kempton Bunton, a 61-year-old retired Geordie bus driver who lived with his wife May, a cleaning woman, and their children in a council house in newcastle upon Tyne, gave himself up.
He had hidden wellington’s portrait in the back of a wardrobe. He hadn’t confided in his wife because ‘otherwise the world would have known’. when he did finally reveal it, she gave the Goya a good spray of Mr sheen and a wipe because she didn’t want it to be returned dusty.
Bunton told police he had stolen the painting to protest against pensioners having to shell out for a television licence. He’d noticed that the Goya had been partially acquired through state and private funding, and felt the money could have been better used to help pensioners.
confidential files from the director of public prosecutions, released via the national archives in 2012, added another layer to the mystery, but i haven’t space to give the whole story away.
it is out there, if you’re curious. Or you might want to wait until director roger Michell — whose films include notting Hill and the upcoming Blackbird with Kate winslet and susan sarandon (showing at the BFi London Film Festival this sunday) — has made the movie.
Production hasn’t started yet but it’s about to be green-lit by Pathe UK.
Michell has told friends he wants the film to have the raw, working- class grittiness and humour of British new wave movies that came out in the sixties, such as a Taste Of Honey.