Arthur Wellesley, Where Are You?

This blog generates email.  Lots of email.  On the whole, most of it is overly kind, sprinkled with occasional suggestions about what I should write about.  (And, true to my contrarian nature, I have never used a single suggestion.)  Some of the email is angry, a few want me to advertise various products they hope to sell on my blog (without even offering me a commission) and the vast majority of the rest complain about my choice of topics.

It seems I write far too frequently about Spain, the Titanic, paintings, art theft, James Bond, and Napoleon.  No one, it seems, wants to read about any of those subjects.  Not another single damn word.  Stop it!

After the English army was successful in chasing Napoleon and the French out of Spain, the monarchy in exile could return.  Briefly, the Spanish loved their traditional enemy, the English (a feeling that wouldn’t last long, since Spanish gratitude is no more lasting than French gratitude).

Goya, who had witnessed the atrocities of the war first hand in Madrid, wanted to paint the portrait of Arthur Wellesley, the English general who was largely responsible for driving the French from Spain.   Wellesley (he wouldn’t become the Duke of Wellington until after Napoleon was exiled to Elba) was notoriously shy about sitting for portraits.  There is an old tale, regrettably apocryphal, about Goya’s having to hold a pistol on the general to keep him still long enough for the artist to sketch the portrait.  Another version, equally fanciful, has the artist breaking a pot over the general’s head.

That Goya found the general a difficult subject is certainly true.  There still exists a pen and ink drawing in which the artist depicted the hero as a sparsely feathered peacock.  Modern X-ray examination of a later portrait of the general on horseback, revealed that Goya had reused an older canvas, replacing a French officer (possibly Joseph Napoleon) with Wellesley astride the same horse.

The finished portrait of Wellesley is remarkable, showing not a triumphant general, but one who is obviously exhausted by the long campaign.  His sad eyes and flushed war-weary face clearly depict a man who needs a long rest.    This is even more apparent in Goya’s preliminary sketch (left) for the portrait.

Goya actually had to change the painting several times, because the painting originally portrayed the general in his traditional red uniform, wearing the Peninsular Medal.  Two years later, after King Ferdinand awarded the general the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Military Gold cross, the artist added the new medals and depicted Wellesley wearing his dress uniform.  And that’s the way the painting looks to this day.

Wellington gifted the painting to his sister-in-law, who in turn presented the portrait to her sister, the wife of the 7th Duke of Leeds.  The portrait remained in the family until it ended up in the estate inherited by the 11th Duke of Leeds.  Both the tenth and the eleventh Dukes are caricatures out of bad British movies:  the tenth lost most of his estate to gambling debts while the eleventh spent most of his hedonistic life outside of England to avoid taxation while systematically selling off the family assets.  In 1961, this included the Goya painting now called the Wellington Portrait. 

Sent to Sotheby’s Auction House, the painting sold for £140,000 ($392,000) to an American oilman, Charles Wrightman.  This immediately touched off a national fervor—Anglo-American cooperation evidently did not extend to Yanks running away with a national art treasure.  There was talk of invoking a seldom used law that prevented objects of cultural importance from leaving the country (a supreme irony since, if similar laws had been enacted against England, most of its museums would be empty).

Showing far more grace than his host country, Wrightman generously offered to sell the painting to England’s National Gallery for the exact sum that he had paid for it.  Despite the British government’s being in dire financial straits—and borrowing money from the United States—the Exchequer gave the National Gallery £100,000 with another £40,000 from a private donor, allowing the museum to purchase the painting.

Then...only nineteen days after it was put on display...it was stolen!  This is the only painting that has ever been stolen from the National Gallery. 

It is hard not to compare this theft to the famous theft of the Mona Lisa.  First, the painting became far more famous after it was stolen than it was before.  Secondly, this theft occurred fifty years to the day after the theft of the Mona Lisa—a circumstance that no one believed was a mere coincidence.

Just like fifty years earlier at the Louvre, crowds of people began to go to the museum to see the spot where the painting wasn’t hanging.  (I wonder if people still show up at Harland and Wolff to see the dockside water where the Titanic isn’t?)

The theft was a national sensation.  Scotland Yard took up the case, a reward was offered and newspaper editorials championed the cause of the missing painting.  Though popular opinion held that some wealthy millionaire had commissioned a gang of international art thieves to steal the painting to add to a private collection, the authorities had few concrete leads, but did offer that the physical task of stealing the painting was most likely committed by a gang with special training, not unlike that given to British Commandos. 

Scotland Yard had little to work with until a handwritten note with block letters arrived at the Reuters News Agency.  The author claimed responsibility for the theft, but claimed the painting would be returned if the British government donated another £140,000 to charity, deriding “those who value art over charity.”  The note included details of the marking on the back of the painting, information that was not public knowledge.

The government did not respond, however, it’s policy being not to negotiate with criminals.  About a year later, another such note arrived, deriding the British government for caring “more about a few pennies worth of Spanish firewood” than the welfare of people.  (The painting was done on a mahogany board, typical of the era.)  Again, the government did not respond.

Annual notes continued, some even detailing how the National Gallery could hold special showings with paid admittance prices to raise the necessary sums.  In each case, the British government refused to respond.  Finally, in 1965, the Mirror, a London newspaper, offered to act as an intermediary, promising to make “a good faith effort” to raise the sums for charity.

This announcement resulted in a new note sent directly to the Mirror.  Could the paper guarantee that at least £30,000 be raised?  Despite the newspaper’s refusing to guarantee a definite amount, a claim check for a Birmingham luggage station was mailed to the paper.  When the claim check was presented, authorities recovered a carefully wrapped painting.  The Goya painting was in perfect condition, missing only the frame.

Despite the paper’s assurance, no money was ever raised for charity.  The National Gallery refused to consider the idea.  It is an ironic twist that instead of securing £140,000 for charity, the thief spent exactly fourteen pence in postage.

A few months later, Kempton Bunton, a 61-year-old retired bus driver, presented himself to authorities, admitting that he had stolen the painting, providing enough details never revealed to the public that the police were convinced of his guilt, despite the fact that the elderly stout man seemed physically incapable of having committed the crime.  According to Bunton, he had simply remained hidden in a bathroom until after the museum closed, whereupon he lifted the painting off the hooks holding it in place, then squeezed through the bathroom window dropping a dozen feet to the ground.  From there, he simply had to climb a garden wall to make his escape.

The fact that the robbery occurred exactly 50 years after the theft of the Mona Lisa turned out to be a extraordinary coincidence.  If you think about it, every day is the 50^th anniversary of something.

And his motive for the robbery?  He said he was outraged at the high prices paid by the elderly to obtain a television license.  If the government could pay a fortune for a Spanish painting, he believed that people who had worked and paid taxes through two world wars should be allowed to watch a little television without the government taxing them.

As it turned out, Bunton was only sentenced to three months for having stolen the painting’s frame.  Through a loophole in the law, he couldn’t be convicted for stealing the painting, since the definition of theft then on the books specified that the theft be for profit and the loss intended to be permanent.  Since Bunton had always intended to return the painting, and the theft was to benefit charity, those charges were dropped.

This loophole was quickly filled.  Parliament hurriedly passed the 1968 Theft Act, specifically mentioning the theft of the Wellington Portrait.

Of course, that is not all of the story.  In 1996, long after Bunton’s death, previously classified documents were finally released, revealing that the British government eventually learned that it was not actually Kempton Bunton who had stolen the painting, it was his son, John, who had committed the theft.  John Bunton had been inspired by his father’s anger at the government and stolen the painting.  His father had helped him hide the portrait and had crafted the notes sent through the mail.  The British government, not seeking to look any more foolish, had simply kept the true story secret.

There, I told you at the beginning that I was a contrarian, so there is the story that touches on ALL of the subjects readers are tired of hearing about.

Oh, wait!....I forgot James Bond!

While the painting was missing, the public never stopped clamoring for more theories and stories about the painting, and publishers eager for readers obliged them by regularly printing wild tales about where the painting might be.

In 1962, the James Bond movie, Dr. No was released.  In the film, as James Bond is making his way through the secret headquarters of the nefarious Dr. No, he stops to admire a painting on an easel...