It’s a Sunday morning, just before noon, and staff at Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery are about to open up for the day when a barely believable discovery is made.
In the Margaret Pilkington room, there are empty spaces on a wall where three works of art should be – one each by Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Paul Gaugin. The three pieces, worth an estimated total of £4m, are gone – frames and all.
The gallery is shut, the police are called, and a hunt for the artworks, and thieves, begins.
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As it transpires, the search for the art does not take long. The thieves, however, remain unidentified more than 20 years on.
The gallery was shut while police investigated the raid -Credit:Manchester Evening News
The mystery begins at some point between 9pm on Saturday 26 and noon on Sunday 27 April, 2003. The raiders enter the gallery, on Oxford Road, by forcing open steel-covered doors at the rear before turning into the Pilkington room and carefully unscrewing the two nearest pictures, along with a third at the end of the wall.
They then escape, undetected by security and CCTV, with the pieces – Van Gogh’s The Fortifications of Paris with Houses, Picasso’s Poverty and Gauguin’s Tahitian Landscape.
After horrified staff discover the theft, Greater Manchester Police are called to the scene at 12.30pm on the Sunday and spend the day combing the gallery for evidence, discovering several other items also missing. They later tell the media the raid was “well planned”.
Van Gogh’s piece The Fortifications of Paris with Houses (1878) was among the artworks stolen -Credit:Getty Images
However, a little over 12 hours after being alerted to the theft, at 2am the following Monday, GMP takes a call from an anonymous woman with a tip-off. She directs them to a boarded-up, graffiti-strewn public toilet in Whitworth Park, 200m away from the gallery.
In the dark hours of a sodden Manchester night, officers go to check out the tip and find the valuable artworks rolled up in a cardboard tube – with the ends sticking out. The national press later dub this toilet the ‘Loovre’.
Along with the art, police also discover a crumpled up note, written in a childish scrawl, the ink smudged by the rain.
The public toilet in Whitworth Park where the three stolen works of art were discovered -Credit:PA
It reads: “The intention was not to steal, only to highlight the woeful security.”
GMP takes a bullish stand after the pieces are found, with Detective Chief Inspector Peter Roberts saying: “The hand written note which was found with the paintings suggests they were taken as a noble cause, however unfounded this may be.
“If this is the case it has certainly backfired on the person or persons responsible and I am now investigating an offence of theft.”
Jo Begg, the Whitworth’s development director, meanwhile defends the Whitworth’s security arrangements.
The note left with the paintings -Credit:PAUL SIMPSON
“The gallery has a very sophisticated security system,” she says. “We have CCTV cameras, alarms and rolling patrols outside at night.”
However, she concedes the theft does highlight ‘a number of issues’ which were to be looked at by the police and Manchester University – who own the gallery.
Ms Begg goes on to say that, while the gallery is relieved to have the artworks back, the Van Gogh has been left with a ‘significant’ tear in one of the corners.
Poverty, painted by Pablo Picasso in 1903, was one of three valuable works of art stolen in the raid on the Whitworth -Credit:Press Association
She adds that repairing all three of the artworks could take some time.
“Leaving them outside could have had an effect on the paper,” she says. “They are very fragile.
“They are very old works so they are going to need possibly a lot of repair after being exposed to the air. The very act of taking them out of a frame and putting them in a tube could have caused some damage.”
Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian Landscape (1891) was also stolen in the raid -Credit:Getty Images
She concludes: “It has been a difficult weekend for us… We are very angry, because these are irreplaceable works of art, and a lot of the population will be angry too.”
The following May, the three artworks go back on show at Whitworth Art Gallery after the six-inch tear to the Van Gogh is repaired. But, as for the perpetrators, they are never found.
Was it an inside job? Or, as suggested by some, a so-called ‘Boomerang theft’, where the thieves quickly realise that shifting three ‘irreplaceable works of art’ might prove tricky so quickly dump them?
Police were called to probe the incident after staff uncovered the theft on Sunday 27 April, 2003 -Credit:Bill Batchelor
In the days following the heist, director of the gallery, Alistair Smith, comes out to say he is certain the thief wanted to embarrass the institution.
“There are all sorts of ways of drawing attention to lapses in security – if these exist – other than stealing pictures,” he says. “It’s a crime.
“I think that the psychology of this theft shows somebody had a grudge against the institution or certain people in the institution.”
Meanwhile, Det Chf Insp Roberts also speculates it is an inside job.
Visitors were turned away from the Whitworth Art Gallery on the day the theft was discovered -Credit:Bill Batchelor
“The method employed does suggest to me that they had an intimate knowledge of the gallery and the security system employed at the time,” he says. “We do not think it’s a chance burglary.
“It’s someone who carried out a lot of planning, who may know someone who works here, someone who used to work here or is an expert in security.”
The officer goes on to say the belief is that the anonymous female who tipped off police is “closely linked, if not actually responsible” for the theft.
Speaking at the gallery, Mr Roberts also challenges the thieves to get in touch.
The three artworks were re-hung in the Whitworth the following May -Credit:Manchester Evening News
“If they see their actions as a noble cause, perhaps they are brave enough to come forward and give us their reasons.”
They aren’t and they don’t – and their identity remains a mystery.
The M.E.N. contacted the Whitworth this week to see if anybody there could discuss their recollections of the case but nobody was able to help.