Undoubtedly some do, but I think there’s easily enough people who’d genuinely want this for themselves and a select few to make it profitable. I’d’ve chosen Wheatfield with Crows, myself, but whatever.
The insurance company presented with a ransom demand has the same problem as any kidnap victim - how do I know it’s really them, how do I know I’ll get anything back after I pay? More reliable and simpler to pay the victim (that’s what the premiums were for) and bide their time retaining title until the painting surfaces, even a few decades down the road.
What about the possibility that a rich, unscrupulous collector actually values (emotionally/aesthetically rather than financially) the art for its own sake, not caring about bragging or showing off? Theoretically - and I’m not saying this is likely, just that it is possible - a super rich person with artistic sensitivity and terrible morals could want to own and enjoy a spectacular piece of art without wanting to show off. Such a person might be a client for the theft of a particular artwork that could never be shared with others.
Here’s why I believe this:
When I was young, I read a short story in which some people needed to manipulate a super-wealthy individual (“We Also Walk Dogs” by Robert Heinlein - a Cafe Society thread helped me ID it a while back). They could not bribe him because he already had so much money, but they ultimately bend him to their will by stealing a fabulous antique ceramic bowl and offering it to him if he will do what they want. I scoffed when I read the story - “really? Who would do something difficult just for a ceramic dish?” - but that was before I visited the Freer Art Gallery in DC during an exhibit of Japanese ceramics.
There was a bowl in that exhibit that I would have killed to own. Well, of course not really - but that’s because I’m not completely amoral. If I were a super-rich, not-particularly-moral individual, would I have broken laws to have that bowl for myself? Absolutely. Decades later I am still torn apart remembering how beautiful it was.
Personally, if I had a Raphael in my apartment, it would be enough for me just to have it; I would care if anyone else knew.
I doubt this is the reason for stealing this particular Van Gogh, but works have been stolen from private collections and auctions blocks by people who thought (often quite rightly, if you ask me) that there was a hiccup in their provenance.
A lot of great European works once were in private collections owned by Jews, and ended up in the hands of the German government, which depending on which side they ended up on after the smoke had cleared, were sold to rebuild the economy after the war, or confiscated by the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union sold some, and kept some.
Many post-Renaissance works that made their way to the US have something like this in their provenance.
Correcting the theft might be difficult if the family that originally own them was wiped out, but there are people who felt they should have gone to Israel.
Then, there are paintings that stayed in the families of the sitters for generations until someone sold it after a particularly bad downturn-- a plague, a war, or some kind of economic collapse for some other reason. The family of the sitter may want to reclaim the painting.
Not a painting but a coin: The “Farouk” 1933 Double Eagle. While a large number of these coins were minted, they were melted down and all specimens were recalled. A few escaped into the wild (i.e., were stolen). The most famous of which ended up in the collection of King Farouk of Egypt. The US found out about this and repeatedly requested it’s return. This continued after he was deposed and the collection ended up in the hands of the new government who sold it off.
(It eventually disppeared for decades, wound up in the US, got confiscated by the feds, ended up at auction and is now legally owned by a private individual.)
So this stolen item spent over 40 years in the hands of private collectors. Who knows how many times it was sold? It was quite famous so anyone doing the least bit of checking would have known it was a stolen item.
And the only reason it came to light was due to a British coin dealer being caught in a sting in the US. If the dealer had not been such an idiot (both in letting too many people find out he had it as well as bringing it to the US), it would still be secretly in private hands, selling once in a while for a significant price.
Those only pay out if the item is recovered. Local law enforcement won’t work and there aren’t any assult teams fastroping from helis or undercover agents silently neutralizing guards for artwork.
You copy it. Keep the original itself and pass off a few copies of it to rich collectors who will be fooled and pay the premium price. It works because secrecy between everyone is essential, and then when big money insurance steps in, no one wants to lose.
How many Van Gogh Sunflowers are genuine?
I wonder how many of these great works are actually insured. In the UK at least, there is a trade-off between the high premiums and the cost of good security. Many, probably most of the hugely valuable works of art owned by the Queen or the country are not insured - the same goes for the buildings they are displayed in. For example, when the South Wing of Hampton Court caught fire, the paintings and other works were only saved because the staff carried them outside. The £millions needed to restore the building were raised from public subscriptions, the Queen and the government.
Some years ago I went to a conference at Althorp, the family home of Dianna Spencer and we were given a tour. I asked about insurance for the many pictures by famous (and not so famous) artists and the guide pointed to the uniformed guard. “That’s our insurance,” he said.
This got me thinking… What good is insurance for a one-of-a-kind item? Even if the insurance company pays you, you can’t get a replacement. The most you could do with the money would be to buy a similar one-of-a-kind item. The money is better off in the bank earning interest.
Rather more to the point, the real story behind the theft of Goya’s Duke of Wellington could not have been more prosaic - those involved weren’t exactly criminal masterminds or secretive billionaires.
While it is true that national governments usually don’t insure their cultural treasures, it is probably naïve to think that wealthy British aristocrats don’t do so. The late Duke of Buccleuch, who was significantly richer than Earl Spencer and had a rather better art collection, certainly insured his ‘Leonardo’ (or, more realistically, his partial Leonardo) before it was stolen in 2003. They may be very wealthy, but the British government is wealthier than they are by several orders of magnitude.
Link? Pic? My law degree is proof enough of my amorality and I’ve been training on stealth video games for 3 decades.
I’m thinking crime bosses would be the most likely customers. The stolen art market is likely quite thin, illiquid as there are few buyers and sellers. Even communicating t other that you’re in the market to sell or buy is taking a risk of attracting attention. Crime bosses would have all the needed connections and skills and they’re the type who already hide a lot of what they own from public view.
You mean link to a pic of the ceramic bowl? Alas, the exhibit was in pre-internet days. There was an exhibition book which I would have spent my last penny to buy if it had provided good documentation of the beautiful objects displayed, but - weirdly - the photos were black and white, which didn’t even come close to doing most of the pieces justice (for example there was a lot of celadon, and who wants to look at B&W pics of celadon?).
The piece I loved enough to commit a felony for was a bowl that had cracked and been repaired with gold. The accompanying information noted that the Japanese aesthetic was such that an artfully repaired ceramic might be more prized for its beauty than a “perfect” piece that had never broken.
That attitude was easy to understand in the case of this particular bowl, which had a hairline crack from the lip about half way down to the bottom of the bowl. A thin gold line traced the crack and pooled slightly near the bottom, giving the effect of a delicate golden teardrop sliding down the inside of the bowl. I have no words for how striking it was.
Sounds like kintsugi (金継ぎ). I always liked it; why throw away a perfectly good bowl when it can be mended?
Hey, I’ve got an idea.
Trade it for toilet paper.
Someone had to be first. 
DPRK mentions the name, although I knew it as “kintsukuroi” (is there a difference?)
https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+art+broken&rlz=1C1SQJL_enCA829CA829&sxsrf=ALeKk00yqlbA7sJn5WmBApFSMLUfMh-sfA:1585694516222&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjfgPKy5MXoAhWIZM0KHb9pDRUQ_AUoAXoECBcQAw&biw=1780&bih=959 although perhaps you already knew. The philosophy behind it is nice, not asking perfection but embracing imperfections and remaking what was broken.
I suppose it’s art anyone can make if they’ve got a an object made of ceramic, lacquer/epoxy and time.
They seem to make jewelry along the same lines: https://www.google.com/search?q=kintsukuroi+teardrop&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwios6a85MXoAhVJA98KHcNrC50Q2-cCegQIABAA&oq=kintsukuroi+teardrop&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoECCMQJzoCCAA6BQgAEIMBOgQIABBDOgYIABAFEB46BggAEAgQHjoECAAQHjoECAAQGFDA_xNY_KcUYMSpFGgCcAB4AIABYIgBrQ2SAQIyMpgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1n&sclient=img&ei=R8eDXujzOcmG_AbD163oCQ&bih=959&biw=1780&rlz=1C1SQJL_enCA829CA829
My guess is that it was stolen to order for a private collector, anything from a crime boss to a rich industrialist, and the picture is now sitting in a small locked room somewhere … where?
I seem to recall that there was a 50 year limit for stolen art, meaning that it could emerge blinking into the sunlight after half a century. Or not?
I had an art teacher in high school who, as a beautiful young art student in the 50s, had stolen a small, minor Renoir from the Baltimore Museum. The frame was more interesting than the painting and the work had been warehoused instead of displayed, so no one knew it was missing. She hung it in the hallway of her crappy little tract home and told anyone who asked that it was a copy by an art student she had known. I probably saw it there and attached zero importance to it. Decades later her daughter tried to pass it off as a flea market find from West Virginia so she could sell it, and the FBI was called. The teacher/thief is dead now and the painting is back at the museum. Not sure where the daughter is. Anyway, this popped up over 60 years after the theft, so if there’s a statute of limitations, it did not apply to this.
Here’s a summary article on statute of limitations and such in the US. Note that the rules vary quite a bit from state to state. And things can get quite messy regarding who-knew-what-when and should have filed suit, etc.
I saw an older article that said that international trade in stolen art was 2nd only to illegal drugs.
This is big business. The amount in the homes of mafia bosses and such is trivial compared to just ordinary rich people who think themselves above the law.
I like the various Starry Night ones, but I would pick Almond Flowers or Irises myself.
What good is a reward if you are dead? Do you think the police are going to just kick down the door of a Saudi prince? The people who take items like this have friends that are just like them, they can show it off to them.
And the help knows its place.