[MSN] UK. Second bronze sculpture stolen

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Second bronze sculpture stolen 

Staff and agencies
Tuesday January 24, 2006 


The stolen Lynn Chadwick sculpture The Watchers. Photograph: Metropolitan
police/PA
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1693917,00.html 


Thieves have stolen a £600,000 bronze sculpture from the grounds of a London
university, police said today. 
The two-metre high sculpture, one of a set of three statues by Lynn
Chadwick, was taken from Roehampton University in south-west London,
overnight on January 10. 

The Art Newspaper reported that the figure had been cut away by its feet
from the base of the sculpture, called The Watchers. Detectives said it
would have taken at least eight people to move the artwork

The theft comes less than a year after the university "discovered" The
Watchers in the grounds of Downshire House, one of its campus buildings, and
considered whether to sell it or move it to make repairs. 

Notes from the minutes of a finance meeting held in March last year read: "A
valuable piece of art by Lynn Chadwick has been discovered in the grounds of
Downshire House. The estimated worth of this piece is £200k and it would be
good to relocate the piece and have it repaired, but there is an opportunity
to sell the piece and take a profit." 

A university spokeswoman confirmed that the sculpture referred to was the
stolen artwork but refused to comment further on how the bronze piece -
which reportedly weighs a third of a tonne - could have been overlooked.
According to the Wandsworth Borough Council website, the sculpture was grade
two listed in April 1998 and was sited at Roehampton in 1963 by London
County Council.

The theft comes just weeks after a massive £3m Henry Moore bronze sculpture
was taken from the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green, Much Hadham, in
Hertfordshire. 

The Metropolitan police said there had been around 20 similar thefts of
artworks in and around London in the last six months. Officers fear valuable
sculptures worth millions of pounds are being stolen to be melted down and
used for scrap metal. 

Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, head of the Metropolitan police's arts and
antiques unit, said: "The people perpetrating these crimes appear to have no
appreciation of, or respect for, the objects they are stealing. 

"Rewards have been offered for the return of some of the objects and we
would encourage anyone with information to come forward and assist us to
recover these important objects." 

The artwork stolen from Roehampton this month was one of only three such
pieces in the world. The others are kept in Loughborough and Denmark. 

The Henry Moore sculpture Reclining Figure was taken on December 15 by
thieves using a flat-bed lorry with a lifting crane on the back. 

The sculpture, which was created in 1969-70, was being kept in a farmyard
next to the Henry Moore Foundation visitor centre awaiting repositioning. 

At the time police said the thieves had planned to steal the sculpture and
voiced fears they would melt it down for its scrap value of about £5,000. 

Chief Inspector Richard Harbon said at the time that police classed the
sculpture as a "national treasure". 

He added: "It is a nationally-renowned sculpture and very, very difficult to
get rid of. This is not opportunist theft. These are people who knew what
they were doing, knew what they were after. A very, very audacious theft." 

Despite widespread publicity about the theft, the artwork has still not been
recovered and police investigations are ongoing.

Chadwick, who was born in London in 1914, studied drawing, watercolour and
oil painting before working as an architectural draughtsman in London from
1933 to 1939. He came to sculpture relatively late, holding his first
exhibition in London in 1950, but his reputation grew rapidly. He won the
international prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1956 and was
awarded the CBE in 1964. In 1958 the sculptor bought Lypiatt Park, near
Stroud in Gloucestershire, where he was buried following his death in April
2003.

Information on the Wandsworth Borough Council website concerning the missing
Chadwick sculpture's listed status describe it as "three abstract figures,
of menacing and predatory character that sum up Chadwick's fear of 'big
brother', an Orwellian theme in tune with popular politics of the time."
ongoing.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/