[MSN] Picture vanishes from Austen set

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

April 30, 2006 


Picture vanishes from Austen set
John Burns
 
GARDAI have interviewed the makers of a British film being shot in Dublin after the disappearance of a valuable painting at one of its locations. 
A portrait worth €75,000 is missing from Newman House on St Stephen’s Green, which has been used by Becoming Jane, a film about the novelist Jane Austen’s doomed love for an Irish lawyer. 
 
“We have talked to the film-makers and indeed everyone who had access to the building at the time,” a garda source said yesterday. 

“Our investigation is ongoing and we are treating it as a theft.” 

The 18th-century painting is of the family of Richard Chapell Whaley, who built Newman House. It was on loan from the Whaley family to University College Dublin, the owner of the building. 

Ironically, the family is believed to have given the wax portrait to UCD for safe keeping. The university has insured the work, but its value was probably as much sentimental as economic to the Whaleys. 

Mystery surrounds why this particular painting was targeted. Although not large, 40cm by 58cm, it is in a heavy frame and an ebonised oak case. 

The thieves ignored other valuable paintings in the building, which has its own security. 

Gardai have contacted galleries and auction houses in Dublin to ask them to be on the lookout for the painting, which was reported missing 10 days ago, and plan to contact institutions in Britain. 

Detectives say the speedy return of this work is paramount because, being created in wax, it is very fragile. 

A spokeswoman for Becoming Jane had no comment to make about the theft, while UCD would only confirm that gardai were investigating the matter. 

A garda source said filming was not happening in the actual room from which the painting was removed. 

Becoming Jane stars Anne Hathaway of Brokeback Mountain in the title role, opposite James McAvoy, who appeared in the Chronicles of Narnia. The cast also includes Dame Maggie Smith and Julie Walters. The project is estimated to be worth €7m to the Irish economy with jobs for more than 100 cast and crew. 

The film was inspired by the little-known romance between the teenage Austen and Tom Lefroy, who were driven apart by their mothers. It portrays her as a romantic who was inspired to write great novels by the thwarted love affair. 

However, this theory has been described as “fanciful” by Austen aficionados, who have noted that Lefroy got engaged to the sister of a college friend after meeting the author, and that Austen once wrote that she did not “care sixpence” about the Irish lawyer. 
 
Controversy also surrounds the casting of Hathaway as Austen, given that the author of Pride and Prejudice was plain. Austen’s descendant, the actress Anna Chancellor, said: “Her beauty was in her brain. But that’s what Hollywood does.” 
The movie recreated a lavish ball from the 18th century at a Co Offaly castle three weeks ago, with the set being visited by John O’Donoghue, the arts minister. Several scenes were shot at Newman House. 
 
Richard Whaley built 86 Stephen’s Green in the late 1700s and it contains some of the finest plasterwork of that era in Dublin. 

The missing painting shows him with his family, including six children. One of these is Buck Whaley, best known to Dubliners for giving his name to a Leeson Street nightclub, but a notorious rake and gambler in his day. 

He is said to have incurred gambling debts of £14,000 in one evening, and was forced to leave France when banks refused to honour his cheque. 

Among his notorious capers was to jump from the couchant lion over the door of Newman House into the box of his carriage below, a feat usually undertaken after he had imbibed quantities of port. 

Irish stately homes have long been a favourite target of art thieves. Martin Cahill, the criminal known as The General, was particularly light- fingered around old masters. 

In 1986 he pulled off what was then the biggest art theft in history, getting a haul worth up to €100m from Russborough House in Wicklow. 

This included 18 world-class paintings including Vermeer’s Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid. 

The Beit collection was the target of several robberies, the first involving heiress Rose Dugdale in 1974. After Cahill, the house was broken into twice more and the remaining collection was placed in storage.
 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/