Almost twenty-five years ago, while the world was welcoming a new millennium, a painting by Paul Cézanne, “Paysage d’Auvers-sur-Oise,” also known as “View of Auvers-sur-Oise,” was stolen from the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford, England.
A Little History About Where the Theft Happened
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology (“the Ashmolean”), dating back to 1678, is Britain’s first public museum and the world’s second-oldest university museum. Its first building, located on Broad Street in Oxford, was specifically built to house a collection that included antique coins, books, engravings and geological and zoological specimens given by Elias Ashmole to the University of Oxford. One of those specimens was a stuffed dodo bird. However, as described by Bill Bryson in A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003):
“In 1755, some seventy years after the last dodo’s death, the director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford decided that the institution’s stuffed dodo was becoming unpleasantly musty and ordered it tossed on a bonfire, . . . a surprising decision as it was by this time the only dodo in existence, stuffed or otherwise.”
Today, that building, known as the Old Ashmolean, holds the History of Science Museum, with a collection of scientific instruments dating from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, including a blackboard used by Albert Einstein during a 1931 lecture at Oxford.
The current building for the Ashmolean dates to the 1840’s. Sir Arthur Evans, a British archaeologist who excavated the ruins of the ancient city of Knossos in Crete, was the curator or “keeper” of the Ashmolean from 1884 to 1908. The present-day museum is largely a result of his efforts, and the donations and contributions of Charles Edward Drury Fortnam, an English art collector and historian.
The museum today holds archaeological finds from Evans’ excavations in Crete, as well as objects from other archaeological expeditions, including from Egypt and Sudan. Other cultural treasures held by the Ashmolean are the Crondall Hoard, a cache of rare 7th century Anglo-Saxon gold coins discovered in Hampshire in 1828, and the Alfred Jewel, a 9th century piece of jewelry made during the reign of Alfred the Great and discovered in Somerset in 1693. This magnificent piece, made of enamel and quartz encased in goldwork, is inscribed with “AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN”, meaning “Alfred ordered me made.” An unsuccessful attempt was made to steal the Alfred Jewel from the Ashmolean in 1997.
In addition to its archaeological collections, the Ashmolean has an impressive art collection, with paintings by Paolo Uccello, Titian, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, John Singer Sargent, Édouard Manet, Pierre-August Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Pablo Picasso. The museum also holds one of the world’s finest collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings and the Pissarro Family Archive – paintings, prints, drawing, books and letters belonging to members of the Pissarro family, including artists Camille Pissarro, his son Lucien Pissarro and his granddaughter Orovida Camille Pissarro.
How the Theft Happened
As the bells and fireworks for the New Year sounded in 2000, a thief climbed up scaffolding surrounding part of the Ashmolean Museum and smashed a skylight above the museum’s Hindley Smith Gallery. Then using a rope ladder, he lowered himself down into the gallery and tossed a smoke canister into the room. He had with him a satchel or “holdall,” containing a scalpel, tape, gloves and a small fan.
Once on the gallery floor, the thief used the fan to spread the smoke and obscure the gallery’s closed circuit camera views. In less than ten minutes, he took from the walls just one piece from a room full of art – “Paysage d’Auvers-sur-Oise,” the only Cézanne held by the Ashmolean. The thief, with the painting, then climbed back up the rope ladder and escaped, leaving behind his satchel and tools, a room full of smoke, a smashed frame, and an alarm flashing near where the painting had been hung.
To date, no information has been uncovered about the location of the painting or the identity of the thief.
How to Identify This Missing Piece of History
The missing oil on canvas, painted in 1879-1880, is 18 inches high by 22 inches wide. The painting depicts a hilly landscape below a cloud-filled blue sky. A group of houses with scattered trees is seen in the middle ground, with a green slope in the foreground. In the background is another hillside with houses and trees, and a church spire in the far left background. Cézanne signed the painting, using red paint, at the lower left.
Why This Missing Piece of History is Important
Paul Cézanne was an important French Post-Impressionist artist whose work was part of the bridge between Impressionism and Cubism. He has been called “an artist’s artist,” appreciated by his contemporaries and later by those who followed him. Camille Pissaro wrote:
“The only ones who are not subject to the charm of Cézanne are precisely those artists or collectors who have shown by their errors that their sensibilities are defective.”
The statement “Cézanne is the father of us all” has been attributed to both Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. In 1907, the German modernist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker described Cezanne as “one of the three or four powerful artists who have affected me like a thunderstorm, like some great event.”
Cézanne painted “Paysage d’Auvers-sur-Oise” while he was living in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small village north-west of Paris near Versailles. The painting was first purchased by French collector Victor Chocquet and, after several intermediate owners, was eventually purchased in the early 20th century by German publisher Bruno Cassirer.
The Cassirer family moved to Oxford to escape Nazi persecution and Bruno’s daughter, Sophie, inherited the painting in 1941. She kept the Cézanne for the remainder of her life. After her death in 1979, her estate incurred a large inheritance tax bill and the painting was accepted by the British government to become part of the Ashmolean collection, in lieu of inheritance tax. According to Christopher Brown, the director of the Ashmolean at the time of the theft, this painting was an important early transitional piece from Cézanne’s very early work to his later mature style.
What to Do if You Know Where This Missing Piece of History Is
If you recognize Paul Cézanne’s painting “Paysage d’Auvers-sur-Oise,” have any information about it, or know its whereabouts, please call us at 1-202-240-2355 or send us an email at contact@arguscpc.com.