Many of us have admired a remarkable sculpture or painting in a museum and imagined it in our homes. Far fewer know the experience of living with such an object, turning it in our hands, running our fingers over the artist’s centuries-old brush strokes or chisel marks. Such intimacy is usually reserved for museum curators and wealthy collectors. The subjects of Michael Finkel’s short, absorbing study – two young people who went on the strangest and most destructive art crime spree in recent memory – belonged to that privileged group. Between 1994 and 2001, Stéphane Breitwieser and his girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus stole some 300 works from museums, castles and churches across Europe. Experts put the value of the purloined objects at more than $1 billion.
Readers familiar with Breitwieser’s story, which was widely reported, may find The Art Thief a little predictable. I knew nothing of the thefts, so found it fascinating and finally shocking. In the early chapters, Breitwieser comes across as an affable if troubled young man with a deep, authentic love for European art of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. We learn he grew up in a home filled with such objects.
After his parents divorce, his father departs from his son’s life, taking those inherited treasures with him. Breitwieser begins to replace his father’s heirlooms with even grander artworks stolen from public and occasionally private collections.
Unlike most art thieves, Breitwieser has no desire to sell or show off his treasures. It’s enough to display them where he and Kleinklaus can admire them: in an attic bedroom on a modest street in Mulhouse, an industrial town in eastern France. As Finkel notes, a 1627 ivory carving of Adam and Eve that the pair steal from an Antwerp museum “might be worth more than every house on his block put together, times two”. While the pair build their private cabinet of curiosities, Breitwieser’s mother occupies the rooms downstairs; but does she ever visit the attic when the two are out? Does she really believe the objects are all flea market finds?
There is something intriguing about the early thefts – their spontaneity and brazenness – especially since Breitwieser commits most with only the aid of a Swiss Army knife while Kleinklaus stands lookout.
Finkel, a US author and journalist, narrates these heart-stopping scenes with a novelist’s flair. But as the narrative moves forward and the stealing accelerates, it becomes clear that most of Breitwieser’s plunder comes from small, provincial museums, places that cannot afford appropriate security for their treasures. Several times, when his actions risk damaging the objects he professes to love, one’s sympathy for Breitwieser thins.
Finkel augments his central story with chapters that cover notorious art crimes of the past or scientific studies on the attractions of art. These are enjoyable supplements, but they rarely bring us closer to understanding Breitwieser’s obsessive thievery. Finkel was able to interview Breitwieser at length but his mother and Kleinklaus refused to participate, and the absence of their stories is inevitably frustrating. Also frustrating is the lack of an appendix listing the works stolen and their known or suspected fates.
Does the author romanticise his subject? It’s an understandable critique, though I think Finkel’s approach helps the reader understand why so many trusted Breitwieser, even to the point of believing his contrition when his crimes were discovered. In the final chapters, as the consequences of his actions become evident, few readers will feel much sympathy for the art thief’s fate.
