This will have been put on display in Police Station's all around the country or in prominent public places. It is simple but effective in its message. The reason for the leaflet captured the attention of the nation and although now largely forgotten it has certainly earned a place in folklore and populist history.
It refers to a Portrait of the illustrious Duke of Wellington by the renowned Spanish artist Francisco Goya and depicts the military commander and later statesman during the Peninsular War between Napoleon and the alliance of Britain, Spain and Portugal.
One of three portraits Goya painted of Wellington, it was begun in 1812, after his entry into Madrid, showing him as an earl in red uniform and wearing the Peninsular Medal. The artist then modified it in 1814 to show him in full dress black uniform with gold braid and to add the Order of the Golden Fleece and Military Gold Cross with three clasps bringing the picture fully up to date at the time.
The portrait was put up for auction in 1961 by its owner, John Osborne, the 11th Duke of Leeds. A New York based collector Charles Wrightsman , keen to purchase , was the favoured bidder at £140,000 which is the equivalent today of nearly three million pounds. Such was the importance of the portrait to the Britain that the Wolfson Foundation offered £100,000 and the Govement added a special Treasury grant of £40,000, matching Wrightsman's bid and so securing it for the National Gallery in London. It was first displayed on 2 August 1961.
Nineteen days later, on 21 August 1961 it was stolen.
The theft entered popular culture, as it was referenced in the 1962 James Bond film Dr. No. In the film, the painting was on display in Dr. Julius No's lair, suggesting the first Bond villain had stolen the work.
The actual story is quite interesting.
Kempton Cannon Bunton was a disabled British pensioner, aged 57, who allegedly stole Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery.
His motivation, he claimed, had been anger at the apparent waste of taxpayers money on the purchase when he, on his low income after working as a bus driver, struggled to pay his televison licence.
According to his own account, from conversations with the gallery guards, Bunton learned that the elaborate electronic security system, of infrared sensors and alarms, was deactivated in the early morning to allow for cleaning. Bunton claimed that, on the early morning of 21 August 1961, he had loosened a window in a toilet and entered the gallery. He had then prised off the framed painting from the display and escaped via the window.
Such was the apparent skill behind the theft that the police initially assumed that an expert art thief was responsible. In the days after the portrait disappeared a letter was received by the Reuters news agency requesting a donation of £140,000 to charity to pay for TV licences for poorer people and demanding an amnesty for the thief, for which the painting would be returned. The request was declined.
In 1965, four years after the theft, Bunton contacted a newspaper, and through a left-luggage office at Birmingham New Street railway station, returned the painting voluntarily. Six weeks later, he gave himself up to the police, who initially discounted him as a suspect, considering the unlikeliness of a now 61-year-old retiree, weighing 17 stone , carrying out such a high profile heist.
His story and a degree of sympathy amongst the public for Bunton led the jury in the Court Case to convict Bunton only of the theft of the frame, which had not been returned.
Bunton's defence team, led by Jeremy Hutchinson QC (also notable for his involvement on the defence team at the Lady Chatterley trial), successfully claimed that Bunton never wanted to keep the painting, thus meaning he could not be convicted of stealing it. Bunton was sentenced to three months in prison.
Section 11 of the Theft Act 1968, which made it an offence to remove without authority any object displayed or kept for display to the public in a building to which the public have access, was enacted as a direct result of the case.
In 1996 documents released by the National Gallery implied that another individual may have carried out the actual theft, and then passed the painting to Bunton.
Bunton's son John was mentioned.
In 2012 the National Archives released a confidential file from the Director of Public Prosecutions in which Bunton's son John had confessed to the theft following his arrest in 1969 for an unrelated minor offence.
John Bunton said that his father had intended to use the painting as part of his campaign and that it would ultimately have been returned to the National Gallery. He said that both he and his brother, Kenneth, had been ordered by their father not to come forward despite the trial.
Sir Norman Skelhorn, the Director of Public Prosecutions, told the police that John Bunton’s admission of guilt was almost certainly not sufficient to prosecute him. Skelhorn also advised that it would be difficult to prosecute Bunton senior for perjury as the prosecution would have to rely on the evidence of the son, who was clearly an unreliable witness. No further action was taken.
Bunton senior died in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1976.
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