Stealing the Scream: The Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece
by Edward Dolnick
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One snowy night in 1994, while the world’s attention was on the first day of the Olympic Winter Games being held in Norway, two men in a stolen car raced across the snow, placed a ladder against the wall of the national art museum and, exactly two minutes later, drove off with one of the most valuable and best-known paintings in the world, The Scream by Edvard Munch. In its place they left a postcard with the words: “Thanks for the poor security.” As the guard was sitting in his bunker watching the security cameras, there were many red faces among the museum staff the next day. But, as the story suggests, it is pretty typical of museum security all over the world.
This factual account of the real-life theft reads like the best detective fiction with a cast of characters even Agatha Christie couldn’t have dreamed up.
The Scream is one of the most recognised artworks in the world and it is replicated in places as diverse as psychiatric textbooks and on key rings and blow-up toys. It has graced the cover of Time magazine and is a symbol of modern-day hysteria. Yet, when Edvard Munch first exhibiÂted it in 1893, he was accused of having dipped his finger in excrement and smeared it around on the board. Like many great paintings it took a long time to become appreciated as a much-loved icon of modernity and is now valued at more than $72million.
Its dramatic loss was major international news and when the Norwegian police called in Scotland Yard to help with the case, Charley Hill of the art squad was assigned to the job. Stealing the Scream follows the trail that eventually led to the recovery of the painting. Along the way we learn about other famous art thefts — the thieves, detectives and careless curators.
There is never a dull moment in the book, which keeps up a pace comparable to a good detective fiction novel and the real-life detective is more compelling than the fictional ones. Charley Hill is a fascinating man. He is half-English and half-American and his mother is from a blue-blooded family. She was a Bluebell dancer married to a farmer from the American Midwest. Hill studied history and theology and was a Fulbright scholar to Trinity College in Dublin. He soon rejected the dullness of academia, which he forsook for the thrill of the chase, eventually ending up in the art squad at Scotland Yard.
Hill’s tactics for recovering missing artworks are revealed in detail and the accounts of the various aliases he assumed to outwit the thieves make riveting reading. To recover The Scream a sting was planned where he posed as an art expert, Chris Roberts, who supposedly worked for the Getty Museum. The deception was supported by the Getty, which drew up false employment records, identity documents, et cetera, to reinforce the authenticity. After a few hair-raising episodes he managed to recover the painting, which was returned to the museum.
Shortly before this book was published The Scream was stolen again, this time from the Munch Museum in Oslo. The theft was as quick and even more dramatic than the first, proving that museums don’t learn from experience.
This was not the same painting but another version of it — Munch painted four. The two at Norway’s National Gallery and the Munch Museum are the most famous in the world. The book does not mention the location of the other two and an internet search did not bring them up, so perhaps the owners are wisely keeping their locations secret to break the cycle of theft.
Stealing the Scream is highly entertaining, fast paced and contains some fascinating insights into various characters, artworks and museums. It won the Edgar Allan Poe award for the best factual crime book and is a highly recommended read — consider that 551 Picassos, 209 Renoirs, 174 Rembrandts and 43 Van Goghs are still missing and Hill’s achievement in retrieving The Scream seems all the more remarkable.