The Most Successful Art Thief in History

The semester is over and while I’m no longer studying for classes, I find I cannot stop reading about art.  Lately, I’ve been reading about the fascinating history of art crime.  I find myself taking endless notes about forgeries, art thefts, and museum burglaries.  It’s habit forming—I even found myself writing lecture notes on the subject before I remembered I’m retired and am no longer in that business.  

Art theft is particularly interesting.  However, I’m not referring to the staggering amount of art theft associated with military conquest, such as the plundering done by Hitler, Napoleon, or Joseph Bonaparte—I’m referring to the individual art theft done by a single person for his own profit.

Did you ever notice that art thieves on television or in the movies are always sophisticated and handsome men who pull off complicated but ingenious heists?  In addition, the victims are always wealthy individuals whose losses will never result in a missed meal or a late mortgage payment.  The insurance company gets gouged, but we all hate insurance companies so there is no real harm done.

Have you ever noticed how often art thieves pull off their capers while wearing their tuxedoes?  Cary Grant in It Takes a Thief, Pierce Brosnan in The Thomas Crown Affair, and Sean Connery in Entrapment.  Do you think it is a coincidence that two of the above also portrayed James Bond?  

In reality, art thieves are not the sophisticated debonair men about town portrayed in the movies—they are rather ordinary people.   According to the Art Theft Division of the FBI, the only common trait of successful art thieves is that they are predominantly male.  This might be correct, or just possibly, female art thieves are so good at their work that they are rarely caught.  (I saw Sandra Bullock in Oceans Eight.)

In any case, the most successful art thief in history is Stéphane Breitwieser—someone you probably have never heard of.  Instead of being a sophisticated, urbane cat burglar, Stéphane was a waiter.  (Though it’s possible that he wore a tuxedo while working in the restaurant.).  Nor did Stéphane live in a chateau financed by his ill-gotten gains.  No, Stéphane did not steal the priceless works of art to sell:  he stole them for his own private collection in his bedroom at his mother’s house.  If you are looking for sophistication, the best I can do is tell you that Stéphane was French.

After graduating from high school, Stéphane had no formal education in art, but worked as a security guard at an art museum, where he noticed that, for the employees of the museum, the art on the wall all but vanished as they focused on the visitors.  According to what Stéphane said at his later trial, no one who works at the museum actually sees the artwork.

By the time Stéphane was 23, he and his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, lived in a couple of attic rooms in his mother’s house.  He was usually unemployed working infrequently as a waiter.  When the two visited a museum in a small town, Anne-Catherine stood watch while Stéphane slipped an antique flintlock into the waistband of his trousers and covered it with his overcoat.  A year later, the duo stole a medieval crossbow from a different museum.

By now, Stéphane had developed an obsession with “collecting” sixteenth and seventeenth century artwork.  The pair frequented small museums where the security was lax and while Anne-Catherine distracted the guards, Stéphane would steal the priceless artwork.  Sometimes, Anne-Catherine would stand lookout while Stéphane dismantled a display case or removed the nails holding frames to the wall, warning her boyfriend with a fake cough to temporarily stop work.

You would think that such unsophisticated thefts would inevitably lead to a short career in art theft, but in just six years Stéphane stole 239 works from 172 museums across Europe—valued at just under $2 billion dollars—and sold none of them.  Instead, he crammed the works into the attic and bedroom of his mother’s house.  According to the thief’s own testimony at his later trial, he liked to be secretly one of the richest men in Europe.  Clearly obsessed with stealing art, he stole a valuable work on average once every two weeks.

Perhaps the most valuable painting the pair stole was the painting of Sibylle of Cleves by Lucas Cranach the Elder (right).  The painting was valued at more than $10 million when Stéphane walked into the Sotheby’s auction house, cut the painting from its frame and hid the canvas under his coat as he walked out.  (If you don’t know who Sibylle is, you have probably heard of her sister, Anne, who married Henry VIII.)

Once home, Stéphane took great care of his art collection, often having paintings reframed by a local art supply store who believed his story about collecting reprints.  He kept the attic windows covered so the sun would not fade the paintings and frequently rearranged the collection to maximize his viewing pleasure.

Another well-known painting stolen by Stéphane is the Sleeping Shepherd by François Boucher.  Once again, the painting was cut from its frame, rolled up and hidden under the thief’s overcoat.  

Stéphane’s first arrest occurred in Switzerland in 1997 when he and Anne-Catherine tried to steal a landscape from a private collector who had graciously given permission for the two thieves to see it.  As they fled with the painting, the owner was able to run out of his home and get the license plate of their car.  While Anne-Catherine was able to make her way back to France, Stéphane was arrested and tried.  Since this was his first offense, he was given an eight months suspended sentence and banned from reentering Switzerland.

One of the real problems with art crime is that the courts rarely give offenders lengthy sentences.  Steal a thousand dollars from a bank in the United States and the typical sentence imposed is 105 months in prison.  Steal a million-dollar painting and you will probably get probation.  Evidently, the judges watched all those movies we discussed earlier.

Stéphane, predictably, kept on stealing artwork.  He didn’t even stop working in Switzerland, just started using his mother's maiden name.  His second arrest was in 2001, when he returned to a museum to erase the fingerprints he had inadvertently left when he stole an antique bugle the day before.  Unfortunately for the art thief, the security guard recognized him from the previous day.

It took the Swiss authorities almost three weeks to obtain an international search warrant to get into the French house where ample evidence was found for a trial.  Stéphane received a three-year sentence (but served only 26 months), Anne-Catherine was sentenced to 18 months (and served six months).  Unfortunately only 110 pieces of art were recovered.

Which brings us to Stéphane’s mother, Mireille Breitwieser.  When Anne-Catherine returned home after the 1997 arrest, she told Mireille the whole story.  Concerned that the police would inevitably arrive literally on her doorstep, she began systematically destroying the artwork.  Paintings were cut into small slivers and fed into her kitchen garbage disposal.  Vases, statues and anything else that could not go down the kitchen drain was thrown into a nearby river.  

While the painting of Sibylle survived, many paintings did not.  One of the paintings that went into the disposal was the Sleeping Shepherd.  For the destruction of so much artwork, though she claimed she had no idea of the value of the artwork she destroyed, Mireille was sentenced to 36 months (and served 18).  Dredging and diving efforts in the river eventually recovered 107 works of art.  One of the destroyed works, Cheat Profiting From His Master by Pieter Brueghel was not only destroyed, but no surviving photograph of the work has been found.

Since his most recent release from prison, Stéphane has been arrested twice more for art theft, and was given short sentences each time after the police recovered dozens of stolen artworks from that same house.  Currently, he is under house arrest and has been ordered to wear an ankle monitor.  It seems to be inevitable that we will eventually hear about him again.