The Duke of Wellington, Kidnapped! Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Alan Hirsch

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Cover design by Jarrod Taylor

  Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

  Counterpoint

  2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.counterpointpress.com

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  10987654321

  e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-771-8

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  FOREWORD

  Chapter 1: Missing

  Chapter 2: Tom Sawyer Meets Oliver Twist

  Chapter 3: When and How

  Chapter 4: The Making of a Crusader

  Chapter 5: Anatomy of an Investigation

  Chapter 6: The Crusade

  Chapter 7: The Ransom Notes (Coms 2-5)

  Chapter 8: Waiting Game

  Chapter 9: The Duke Returned

  Chapter 10: Defeat

  Chapter 11: Surrender

  Chapter 12: Pretrial

  Chapter 13: Before the Bombshell

  Chapter 14: Bombshell

  Chapter 15: Kempton Bunton Takes The Stand

  Chapter 16: The Main Event

  Chapter 17: The Defendant On Points

  Chapter 18: Final Rounds

  Chapter 19: Verdict

  Chapter 20: New Law, New Confession

  Chapter 21: Crime Solved

  Chapter 22: Second Mystery Solved

  Chapter 23: A Hero For Our Time

  Chapter 24: (Non)Conclusion

  NOTES

  DOCUMENTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  The only successful theft from London’s National Gallery took place on August 21, 1961, when a brazen thief stole Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington. One of the most bizarre incidents in the history of art theft, the Goya heist baffled police. Someone somehow sneaked into the National Gallery through an unlocked bathroom window, evaded security guards, and made off with a painting that had just been saved from sale to an American tycoon by the British government. The portrait of the English war hero had gone on display at the National Gallery on August 3—less than three weeks later, it was gone.

  The press had a field day, and the theft infected the popular imagination. In the background of the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, which was filmed soon after the crime, one can see a copy of the missing Goya portrait decorating Dr. No’s villainous hideout.

  Just ten days after the theft, the London police received the first of many bizarre ransom notes. They promised the safe return of the painting in exchange for discounted television licenses for old age pensioners.

  Surely this was a joke? But the ransomer identified marks visible only on the back of the painting, proving that it was in his possession. The ransomer, whose notes were theatrical and flamboyantly written, thought it outrageous that the British government would spend a large sum on a painting when retired British citizens had to pay to watch television. There seemed to be no personal motivation for the theft, only outrage at the government’s TV license scheme.

  But the police would not negotiate, and a merry dance ensued: part true crime, part farce, all fascinating and set against the backdrop of Swinging Sixties London. The story is irresistible, and perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that there has never been a book on the most famous art heist in British history—until now.

  Alan Hirsch’s fine book tells the story of a cinematic, quirky, relatively harmless art crime—the sort that echoes popular film and fiction (it certainly sounds implausible) but that represents the exception in this type of crime rather than the rule. Thanks to media attention, we tend to think of art crime as a handful of big, bold, entertaining museum heists of famous artworks per year. In fact, tens of thousands of art crimes are reported every year the world over. (And many more go unreported.) Knowledgeable sources like SOCA (the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency), Interpol, and the US Department of Justice have noted that art crime is among the highest-grossing criminal trades worldwide, up there with the drug and arms trades, and is a major funding source for organized crime and even terrorist groups, as recent headlines regarding ISIS have made painfully clear. It is certainly not just the art that is at stake.

  While all the tea in China couldn’t convince me to spend a day with armed fundamentalist terrorists, I’d gladly take tea with Kempton Bunton, the portly retired cab driver at the center of Alan Hirsch’s book. He is the sort of character who would be more at home in a nineteenth-century comic novel than a real-life art heist. When I teach the history of art crime at the ARCA Postgraduate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection, which runs every summer in Italy and is the only interdisciplinary academic program in the world where one can study art crime, Bunton is inevitably the best-remembered of the scores of thieves, traffickers, forgers, tomb raiders, and, yes, terrorists my students encounter. While his bizarre story is an exception to the general rule of art crime as sinister and very serious indeed, it is a bright star among real stories that often eclipse their cinematic counterparts in panache, surrealism, and audacity. Everyone loves a quirky character, everyone loves a true crime story (especially if it has a cinematic courtroom scene at its heart), and everyone seems to love to hear about art theft. This book has it all. As long as the realities are kept in perspective, we can choose the charming true crime story over more gruesome, messier ones. And you’ll find no true story in the history of crime that is more charming, implausible, and Dickensian than this one, cleverly told by Hirsch. It is a must for anyone who likes to be entertained and diverted while also receiving a sound and important history lesson.

  When Bunton’s case went to trial, the defense ingeniously invoked an odd loophole in British law. It had to convince a judge who, like Bunton, seemed to have tumbled out of the pages of a Dickens novel. The courtroom drama that ensued was sometimes hilarious, sometimes tense, and always riveting, but was the wrong man on trial? This book provides the definitive answer. It also explains how the case sparked a major change in UK’s criminal law.

  Another law eventually changed too. Television licenses were revoked for old age pensioners, satisfying, long after the fact, the unusual ransom demands of Kempton Bunton. Floating on his cloud up in heaven, Bunton must be looking down upon us with a satisfied smile. For not only was his motive for the theft (eventually) fulfilled, but for decades the police believed what he wanted them to: that he was, in fact, the thief.

  Drawing from exclusive new archival material, including Bunton’s own unpublished memoirs, Alan Hirsch sets the record straight and, for the first time, tells the complete story of London’s most famous art theft and kookiest criminal.

  Dr. Noah Charney

  Ljubljana, Slovenia

  February 2016

  For more information on real art crime and how to study it, visit www.artcrimeresearch.org.

  FOREWORD

  For years I planned to write a book about the theft of Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington because it had everything: an impossible crime and wacky investigation culminating in a bizarre confession and courtroom drama; a stranger-than-life culprit with a ludicrous motive; and an outcome so improbable that it inspired the United Kingdom to change its criminal code. All of that would have been more than enough, but something extra made the case irresistible: I doubted Kempt
on Bunton’s guilt. The only thing better than top-flight true crime is unsolved top-flight true crime.

  While I planned to research the case thoroughly, I was under no illusion that I was likely to solve the case. After all, the theft had taken place a half century before, and most of the major players, including Kempton Bunton, were deceased. But I could pore over the trial transcripts and National Gallery records and talk to members of Bunton’s family (if they were willing) and the few survivors with some connection to this ever-receding event. Even without solving the crime, there was a great story to tell.

  I took the opportunity of the fiftieth anniversary of the crime, in August 2011, to author two articles: one for the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) website and the other for the London Guardian. The articles were coauthored with Noah Charney, a leading art crime writer who shared my fascination with the story and encouraged me to pursue it. Each article expressed skepticism that Kempton Bunton was the actual thief; the articles further noted that I was working on a book about the case.

  The publication of these articles triggered an incredible event: an email from someone claiming that we were correct about Bunton’s innocence and implying that he could prove it. He also revealed something almost as intriguing: After his trial and conviction, Kempton Bunton had authored an autobiography. My new correspondent claimed that he could help me get my hands on Bunton’s unpublished memoirs.

  But the man came armed with demands. He would share his knowledge about the case only under certain conditions that were difficult to meet. How this all played out will be revealed in due course. For present purposes, suffice to say that the man eventually came through, leading me to crucial new information about the case and to Kempton Bunton’s memoirs.

  The memoirs evince an attitude at times in sync with what everyone knew about Bunton, but at times sharply discordant. The surprises start with the fact that Kempton Bunton, bookie and lorry driver, had a real flair as a writer—a most engaging storyteller. His colorful recollections, like the new information about the case, proved indispensable to the story that follows.

  Chapter 1: MISSING

  Scotland Yard detectives receive many calls a day, and each one stirs them, if only a little, because it could be the call, the one that changes everything. It could bring word of a crime that seizes the imagination of the nation or even the world. Solve it and you carve out for yourself a permanent niche in the annals of history. Fail to solve it and the case becomes a migraine that never completely goes away.

  Such a call came the Yard’s way on the morning of August 22, 1961. A prominent painting had been stolen from England’s leading art museum, the National Gallery in London—the first such occurrence in the gallery’s 137-year history. One week later, Time magazine would describe a theft “so brazen that Agatha Christie herself would most likely have dismissed it as too farfetched even for Hercule Poirot to solve.” Newsweek weighed in that it was “the most spectacular art robbery since an Italian workman lifted the Mona Lisa from the Louvre”—exactly fifty years to the day. The prominent journal Arts Review went further, calling it the most spectacular art theft of the century. The feverish response transcended the short-lived hype that often greets juicy current events. More than three decades later, in his book about historical robberies, Sean Steele still ranked this theft “the most famous art rip-off England has ever known.”

  How could someone seize a closely guarded painting undetected and undeterred by a world-class security system never before penetrated? Another London museum had experienced a high-profile theft just five years earlier. In 1956 Summer Day, by French impressionist Berthe Morisot, had been taken from the Tate Museum. As it happens, Morisot’s work had belonged to the National Gallery until 1955. Could it be written off as a coincidence that it was stolen so soon after it moved? Perhaps not. Perhaps the gallery’s reputation for tight security deterred theft, even made it seem unthinkable. When a painting left the gallery, suddenly it became fair game.

  The fact that the August 1961 theft from the National Gallery was unprecedented only begins to explain the hoopla that ensued. The thief (or thieves) hadn’t taken any old painting but rather one of the nation’s most treasured works of art—Francisco Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington. They hadn’t simply stolen a valuable object; they had kidnapped England’s foremost military hero. The Duke of Wellington (christened Arthur Wellesley) is akin to America’s George Washington or France’s Napoleon. Indeed, he bested Napoleon. Even without that crowning victory at Waterloo, Wellington achieved Napoleonic stature. He was a hero for the ages—for thirty-two years his nation’s leading military officer, who did not lose a single important battle. Military historians credit the duke with mastering the art of defense, enabling him to defeat numerically superior opponents. Whatever the method, his track record on the battlefield surpassed the body of work of Napoleon and Washington.

  In one respect, though, the duke lagged far behind his French and American counterparts. Napoleon’s official portraitist, Jacques-Louis David, produced several memorable portraits of his patron, and painting George Washington was virtually required among leading American portraitists. Depictions of Washington at various stages of life by Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, Charles Willson Peale and his son Rembrandt, among others, appear in museums around the United States. For whatever reason, British artists produced relatively few portraits of the Duke of Wellington, and none by an artist as celebrated as Goya.

  But while painted infrequently, Wellington had the good fortune to be immortalized by two masters: not only the Spanish painter Goya but also the great British poet Lord Alfred Tennyson. In his funeral ode for Wellington—nine stanzas and 281 lines of mournful exaltation—Tennyson christened him “The Great Duke” and “England’s greatest son.”

  Goya’s Portrait of the Duke (1812) stemmed from a rare crossing of paths of two world historic figures from different nations and realms. The painting was an act of transnational homage—a Spanish master honoring a British warrior who had recently helped liberate Madrid from the French. Rumors that the two giants did not get along only added to the lore surrounding the portrait. According to one popular if apocryphal story, Goya persuaded the duke to pose by threatening him with a pistol.

  Perhaps belying this improbable tale, Goya actually painted three portraits of the Duke of Wellington. Two are minor works known only to scholars and connoisseurs: a hastily composed equestrian portrait (now in the Wellington Museum at Apsley House at Hyde Park Corner in London) and a red chalk drawing intended as a study for the equestrian portrait (which now sits in London’s British Museum). But the third portrait, the one that really matters, was altogether different. Art historians consider it one of Goya’s more extraordinary works.

  Internal National Gallery documents describe Goya’s duke as “strained but full of energy, as well he might be after he defeated the French in what has been described as his most brilliant victory and while he was yet enjoying only a brief lull in his campaign.” The half-length portrait on a fairly small (27” x 25”) canvas depicts Wellington in resplendent glory, wearing a crimson military coat adorned with metals, including the Order of the Golden Fleece, awarded to him by the Spanish government. Goya set the duke against a plain dark background, but the portrait itself is richly colored—unusual for Goya, who was much afflicted with illness and depression starting in the early 1790s and thereafter generally given to somber coloring.

  In Goya’s hands, the duke’s jutting jaw projects power, but his tense expression seems more meditative than martial. The left of his large blue eyes is alert and focused on the viewer, but the right is lazy and gazing off to the side. A gap separates the only two teeth revealed by his parted lips. Goya’s duke has a sharper, more angular face than other depictions of the man, and his intensity practically leaps off the canvas. Even so, the brightly lit forehead and contemplative countenance suggest a man of thought as well as action. Despite his decorated military garb, G
oya’s duke seems more troubled than triumphant and exudes no sense of self-grandeur. It is a portrayal befitting a man who once said, “Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won” and “I am wretched even at the moment of victory.”

  The Spanish understandably did not share the duke’s ambivalence about victory, at least not the one that had rescued them from foreign oppression, and he was feted on his entry into Madrid by a rapturous public. Goya depicted the liberator with vigor appropriate to the occasion. The portrait of the most famous Englishman by one of Europe’s most celebrated painters, to mark a momentous achievement, had few art historical precedents.

  The British treasured this painting but did not own it, as they were painfully reminded on June 14, 1961, just a few months before the painting’s disappearance. The Duke of Wellington had given the portrait to a sister-in-law, the Marchioness Wellesley, who bequeathed it to her sister Louisa, wife of the seventh Duke of Leeds. The eleventh Duke of Leeds lent it to London’s National Portrait Gallery, where it resided from 1930 to 1949, but he eventually decided to auction it off. Sotheby’s held the auction on June 14, 1961, which became a day of infamy in Great Britain. The painting was purchased by . . . an American. Charles Wrightsman, an oil tycoon and trustee of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, bid £140,000 (or $392,000—the equivalent today of roughly $3 million) and came away with a nation’s proudest canvas.

  Wrightsman, known for his staggeringly impressive and eclectic private collection (which included paintings by Renoir and Vermeer and an extensive assemblage of furniture once belonging to Louis XV), presumably planned either to keep the work for himself or to donate it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Either way, England was mortified and desperate. The day after the fateful auction, Conservative members of Parliament convened the Arts and Amenities Committee and summoned for questioning Selwyn Lloyd, the chancellor of the Exchequer (the British equivalent of the secretary of the US Treasury). Members grilled Lloyd about the debacle, demanding to know why the Exchequer had not bid for the painting. The failure to do so seemed especially galling given that the Exchequer had recently authorized a grant of £163,000 to purchase two paintings by Renoir. Lloyd, once described by eminent British historian Arthur Marwick as “inarticulate almost to the point of incoherence,” unsuccessfully tried to fend off the attacks.