According to a recent article, England’s stately homes are being targeted for their important porcelain pieces.  In the past three years, there have been 21 major cases and, since 2007, there have been 15 attempted robberies.  From the location of the thefts, it would appear that these homes are being targeted for their proximity to major shipping ports so that the thieves can more easily smuggle the pieces out of the country.

One day after five paintings worth an estimated $123 million were stolen from a Paris museum, five different paintings were stolen from a collector’s home in Marseille.  No estimation of value has been given, but the most significant of the works is a Picasso lithograph of a woman’s face.  Reportedly, the burglars knocked on the man’s door, beat him up, and then took the paintings.

Works from the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries are scheduled to go to auction at Christie’s on June 9^th.  The 130 works are thought to raise more than $2.5 million.  Lawrence B. Salander has pleaded guilty to grand larceny and fraud and may be sentenced to up to 18 years in prison.

Mere hours after landscape artist Louis Sloan’s death, his family began looting his home of paintings and other belongings.  Sloan, however, asked that his art be given to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts after his death.  Unfortunately, Sloan’s will is missing and is believed stolen, causing a heated legal battle as to what should be done with his existing body of work.

It has been discovered that hundreds of works have been stolen from the Ankar State Museum for Painting and Sculpture and have been either replaced with fakes or disappeared altogether.  About 400 paintings have been stolen, about ten percent of the museum’s collection.  

Claude Monet’s “Beach in Pourville,” which was stolen from a museum in Western Poland ten years ago, was recovered by Polish police.  An unidentified man has been arrested and confessed to the theft.

“Le March,” a monotype print by Camille Pissarro, has been returned to the French Faure Museum from which it was stolen in 1981.  It was sold by a Texas dealer in 1985 for $8,500.

A collection of about 30 works by artists such as Picasso and Henri Rousseau was stolen from a private villa in the Provencal village of La Cadiere D’Azu in France.  The collection is estimated to be worth $2.1 million.

A painting by Edgar Degas that was on loan from the Musée D’Orsay was stolen from the Musée Cantini de Marseille in Marseilles.  The painting is said to be worth $1.15 million and is thought to have been stolen by someone associated with the museum since the work was stolen overnight and no evidence of a break-in was found.

French police have raided the homes of several employees of the French auction house Drouot after a missing Gustave Courbet painting was found in one of their homes.  After the search, several more paintings were recovered and 12 people were detained.  The painting that prompted the search, “The Wave,” was stolen in 2004 and valued at as much as $1.3 million.

According to authorities, a man and a woman have been charged with attempting to sell an art collector a six-piece series for $100,000 in February of 2008.  They also tried to sell several other works that were determined to be fake by several appraisers before the sales.  They are charged with theft by deception, communications fraud, and felony charges of forgery.

Oslo dealer Pascal Nyborg claims that thieves have stolen a Munch lithograph from his gallery, Nyborgs Kunst.  The work is worth an estimated $355,000 and was taken when thieves smashed the window of the gallery with a stone and made off with the painting.

Seven paintings by the artist Peter Busa were stolen from his son’s Cape Cod home when he was hospitalized over night for a head injury.  Documents for Peter Busa’s autobiography were also stolen.  No description or estimation of value for the works was given.

A collection of statistics on art theft organized by country.

Works in the Interpol registry of stolen art are now available to be viewed in an online database.  The catalogue was previously only available on CD-ROM or DVD.

Police believe that the reported theft of $27 million worth of art from a Pebble Beach, California home is a scam created by the reported victims.  When asked to produce documentation that the paintings exist, the collectors did not respond.  Their insurance broker, however, insists that both the paintings and the documentation exist.

Why steal art?

Marcus Patmon, a former Marine, has confessed to the burglary of a number of works by Picasso and Chagall, which he then sold.  In 2007 he broke into the Washington D.C. Galerie Larouse and took two works that he later sold to a New York gallery and a California dealer.  However, when he tried to sell a second Picasso etching to the California dealer in 2008, she became suspicious and contacted the authorities.  Patmon has confessed to robbery charges at both Galerie Larouse and another gallery, Gallery Biba, in Palm Beach, Florida.  He now faces up to 20 years in prison.

Swedish police have charged a former Stockholm gallery owner with $4.4 million art forgery scam that includes forged works by Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti, Edward Munch, and Egon Shiele.  The man has remained unnamed but 15 forged works were found when police searched his home.

Several works were stolen from the private collection of Ralph Kennaugh and Angelo Amadio, partners in a business that involves buying and selling art, collectively estimated to be worth $27 million.  The paintings stolen from the Pebble Beach home include works by Jackson Pollock, Edgar Degas, Rembrandt, and Renoir.

The Magritte painting “Olympia” was stolen from his former home in Jette, Belgium, which is now a museum dedicated to his life and work.  The painting was stolen by two armed men who forced their way into the museum, which is only open by appointment, and made off with the work, valued at $1.1 million.

The attorney general’s office in Mexico is investigating the claim that several paintings owned by Carlos and Leticia Noyola, Mexican antique dealers, are actually forgeries.  The Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Trust has filed a complaint that claims the works featured in two new books on Frida Kahlo are fakes.

A painting, “Untitled—Oil on Drape,” which has never been exhibited, was stolen from the studio of German painter Sigmar Polke.  Police say that the painting could only have been stolen by someone who had access to the Cologne studio.

At some point on September 3^rd, a series of works by Andy Warhol commissioned by Richard L. Weisman were stolen from his L.A. home.  The works stolen were a series of ten paintings called “The Athletes” and a portrait of Weisman himself.

A Brooklyn couple, Denis Ryjenko and Natella Croussouloudis, was arrested trying to sell a painting that was stolen in June from the Nicholas Roerich Museum.  They were trying to sell the painting to a supposed art collector who was really an undercover police officer for $20,000, and warned him that the painting was stolen and he would not be able to display the painting in his gallery.

A family whose home in Cuba was seized turned into a museum when Fidel Castro took power in 1961 claims that two of their paintings are being displayed in Spain’s Museo Nacional del Prado.  Both of the paintings, “Summer” and “Clotilde Strolling in the Gardens of La Granja,” are by Joaquin Sorolla and were registered in the international Art Loss Register in 1993.  While the family does not object to the paintings’ public display, they would like for the works to be properly credited.

The heirs of an Austrian count, Jaromir Czernin, who sold Vermeer’s “The Art of Painting” to Adolf Hitler in 1940 to save the lives of his family, are asking the government to return it.  The painting has been in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum since 1946.  The painting was originally said to be sold for 1.65 million Reichsmarks, though the family’s attorney is now claiming that the painting was sold for 1 million Reichsmarks, a fraction of its value, and should be returned to Czernin’s family.

The heirs of Jewish collectors Richard Semmel and Hans Ludwig Larson will receive thirteen paintings from various museums in the Netherlands as decided by the country’s Culture Ministry.  The works include paintings by Jan van Goyen and Thomas de Keyser.

The painting that was seized by Iraqi police after the owner tried to sell it for $450,000 is presumed to be fake.  The painting The Naked Woman was stolen from the Kuwait National Museum during Iraq’s 1990 invasion of the country.

Interpol has announced that it will put its database of stolen art online in order to try to limit the trade in cultural objects.  The site will contain photographs of 34,000 stolen works and be free of charge, though one must register to use it.  The database will be updated in real time. 

One of the two stolen sketches from the Nicholas Roerich Museum was returned in an ordinary yellow, padded envelope.  The identity of the returned work has not been revealed.  The envelope sported a Brooklyn return address.

Two Russian masterpieces were stolen from the walls of the Nicholas Roerich Museum on West 107^th Street in two separate heists, say authorities.  The works, both by Nicholas Roerich, are worth a combined value of $90,000.