Still missing, 22 paintings stolen by window cleaner
THE daughter of a Scottish artist who had paintings worth £500,000 stolen by his window cleaner has revealed that fewer than a third of the artworks have been recovered.
Daniel Pressland, 42, was jailed for four years this week for stealing 31 pieces from Alan Davie after the renowned painter died in 2014 at the age of 93.
Mr Davie’s only daughter Kate Davie, 67, said: ‘It’s very upsetting, thinking that someone my father trusted has gone in there and taken paintings.
‘We’re trying to track a load of paintings that were stolen from my father’s house after he died, and possibly before, we’re not sure.
‘After three years it should all be finished but it’s not.’
Only nine of 31 artworks taken from Mr Davie’s home in Hertford have been recovered.
Miss Davie, from Dorking, Surrey, is now working alongside police and the Gimpel Fils gallery, which acted on behalf of her father, to find the paintings.
Prosecutor Sarah Morris told St Albans Crown Court that £243,500 worth of art remained missing.
Pressland, of Billericay, Essex, was found guilty of burgling Mr Davie’s home between April and August 2014, when 11 paintings were stolen.
He was further convicted of a second break-in between August
Jailed, w indow cleaner turned £½m art thief Daily Mail, April 6 ‘Like a vulture on a carcass’
2014 and April 2015, when 17 paintings were taken.
Pressland was arrested after neighbours of the painter saw him putting large canvasses in the back of his van in April 2015, and police found three paintings in the vehicle worth £190,000.
Judge John Plumstead called Pressland an ‘unscrupulous chancer’ and said: ‘You happened on an opportunity to get rich quick by stealing from someone who you had worked for for years. You were like a vulture on a carcass and just helping yourself. You acted disgracefully.’
Mr Davie, born in Grangemouth, Stirlingshire, studied at Edinburgh College of Art in the late 1930s and was admired by painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and David Hockney.
Victoria Long, a director at Gimpel Fils gallery, said: ‘If the paintings are put on the market, they’ll hopefully soon be found.’