Monet's Falaises près de Dieppe, stolen at the weekend. Photograph: Eric Estrade/Getty Images
On Sunday, five armed men entered the Beaux-Arts Jules Cheret Museum in the centre of Nice. Witnessed by a handful of visitors they brazenly removed from the gallery walls four paintings; a work by Claude Monet, Falaises près de Dieppe (Cliffs near Dieppe); an Alfred Sisley, Allée des peupliers de Moret (The Lane of Poplars at Moret); and two works by the Flemish artist Jan Breughel, Allégorie de L'Eau (Allegory of Water) and Allégorie de la Terre (Allegory of Earth). The paintings are said to be invaluable.
These paintings are now listed on the Art Loss Register's database of over 170,000 stolen works of art and antiques, where they will be checked against 300,000 public and private sales annually. Fifty-three stolen works by Monet have been reported to the ALR's database making his paintings amongst the most targeted. Works by Picasso are the most frequently stolen, totalling 671 items.
Museums will remain a target for theft as long as they are open to the public. In addition, inventories may not be checked regularly so the loss may not be discovered until some time after the theft. However, encouragingly 24 percent of recoveries made by and reported to the ALR are works of art stolen from museum and public galleries.
What makes thieves steal art? There can be a number of reasons. A thief may be anything from an addict wanting some quick cash who might sell a work of art worth thousands for fifty pounds, to a political activist such as Rose Dugdale stealing the Vermeer from Russborough House, Ireland. Other examples include criminal gangs in lawless areas of Eastern Europe targeting art fairs and museums to fund wider criminal activities, and those who steal art to climb up the hierarchy of the criminal underworld on the notoriety of their deeds, also known as 'trophy theft'.
As an artist grows in popularity they're more likely to be a target for theft. Recently works by Banksy, who until recently had limited acclaim, have begun to attract art thieves. The more prolific an artist is, as in the case of Picasso, obviously the more works there are to steal, increasing the chances of theft. However the more recognised an artist becomes, the more high profile the case and the harder it is for the work to be sold on. This barrier for resale is made even stronger when works are reported to the ALR's database. Even if a work of art is not detected immediately but perhaps is kept hidden away for a number of years, eventually it will turn up on the open market where it will be identified through the ALR's database searches.
Both the Monet and Sisley from the Beaux-Art Museum had already been stolen back in 1998. Authorities seized the works within a month of the theft from a boat docked at the port of Laurent du Var near Nice. A quarter of all ALR recoveries come about within the first year of the theft: however the average time from theft to identification is around five years. The two Turners stolen in July 1994 from a museum in Frankfurt whilst on loan from Tate Britain were not recovered until July 2000. However, some works can remain underground surfacing twenty or thirty years later. The still life by Cezanne stolen from a private Boston collector in the 1970s didn't reappear until 1999. Hopefully the Beaux-Art haul will turn up much more quickly.
