Daring Theft Of Modern Paintings

Press, Volume C, Issue 29616, 12 September 1961, Page 13

Daring Theft Of Modern Paintings

(N Z Press Association—Copyright)

WEST LOS ANGELES, September 11.

Four modern paintings valued at 670,000 dollars were stolen last night from the home of a wealthy industrialist, police reported.

It was the latest in a series of daring art thefts extending from west Los Angeles to London and the French Riviera, United Press International said. ■ The robbery occurred at the home of Mr David Bright during the family’s absence. The family’s maid. Jan Prosser, aged 24, told police she was alone at the 14-room mansion at the time. She had just shut a pet dog in its backyard kennel and was entering a side door when “a well-built man about 6ft tall’’ suddenly shoved a revolver in her back. “Is there anyone in the house,” she said the man asked. “No ... I think I’m going to faint.” “No you’re not, let’s go inside,” Miss Prosser quoted the robber as saying. She described him as having "what might be” a fake scar on his left cheek, wearing dark glasses and dressed in khaki cap and pants, brown windbreaker jacket and suede s’ ces. The robber, after forcing her into a cupboard, spent six minutes selecting his pictures and escaping, Miss Prosser said. Stolen were Pablo Picasso's “Sebastian,” valued at 400.000 dollars and painted in 1903 during the Spanish artist’s “blue period," Picasso's “Looking Through a Window,” an abstract valued at 100.000 dollars. Amadeo Modigliani’s “Portrait of a Woman,” worth 150.000 dollars and an unnamed abstract by the Italian painter Afro Basaldella valued at 20,000 dollars. “The robber showed amazing discrimination,” Mr Bright's son, Edward, aged 25, said later. He said there were about 40 paintings in the mansion's various rooms whose total value was about 2,000.000 dollars. All were insured “From what I understand, the robber—after locking up Jan —checked every room in the house and then chose his pictures." he said. “He cut them from their frames, which are still here unharmed.

“He also tried to take a three-by-flve (foot) Degas but couldn’t roll it up because it was on cardboard and so left it on the kitchen floor.” Mr Bright, sen., was on a business trip In Paris when the theft occurred, his son said. “We telephoned him and he is returning home tomorrow because of the theft,” he said. Mr Bright said protection of the art collection consisted of a patrol service and the family’s three servants, Miss Prosser, a butler and a eook. There was no burglar alarm system. Both the butler and cook were on their day off, he said.