Every Picture Hides a Story

Cane, William and Gabrielle, Anna. Every Picture Hides a Story: The Secret Ways Artists Make Their Work More Seductive. London : Rowman & Littlefield 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

Each year 11 million people trek to the Louvre to gawk at the Mona Lisa. Many visitors clutch guidebooks in hand describing the painting. For some, it's the experience of a lifetime, one they'll talk about with friends and family for decades.

 

Yet modern researchers say that the vast majority of people will never recognize the hidden messages in this painting. That's because those hidden messages are subliminal.  

Description:

I picked up this unexpectedly wonderful art book because I wanted to learn more about Berthe Morisot, the woman painter featured in the hisgtorical novel, The Lost Masterpiece which I had just finished reading. She was considered the first female Impressionist artist, living in the 1870s and painting alongside Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cassatt, and other revolutionaries during their earliest days when their work were so radical, the artists were completely disdained and not shown at the famous Salon exhibition in Paris. I just wanted to view some of her paintings and understand more about her life.

 

First the book itself. It is printed on heavy, glossy pages which make the accompanying paintings for each artist appear as the highest quality. Each painting is crystal clear, allowing readers to see and easily understand the subliminal messages the artist portrayed in the piece. Details rendered so clearly help readers finally understand both the background and message behind the works.  

 

Second, the book covers a wide variety of artists, including short chapters on Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Eakins, Degas, Klimt along with those artists mentioned above. And, of course, there was a section on Berthe Morisot, her life and works, and her possible relationship with Edouard Manet, the focus of The Lost Masterpiece historical novel. 

 

Third, the book is addicting. While I started out only wanting info on Morisot, I could not resist poking into the works of other favorite artists, captivated by the glossy paintings and soon engrossed in reading about the backgrounds of the artists' lives along with details about their most famous works. The authors' research into each artist is thorough and yet succinctly written to captivate readers with fascinating details without forcing them to slog through more than five pages for any artist.

 

I learned:

• The Mona Lisa's smile is fascinating because Da Vinci used scientific optics to change a viewer's impression based on what part of the painting the viewer's eyes focused on and what is seen out only of the corner of their vision;

• Several contemporary art critics considered Berthe Morisot the finest of the Impressionist artists. She created nearly 400 paintings; 

• Marie Cassatt, in contract to her reputation as a painter of domestic scenes of families, mothers with children, and other domestic scenes, was a fierce advocate for women's rights, rejected the institution of marriage, and had no family or children of her own. "I am independent! I can live alone and I love to work";

• Van Gogh based his startling use of bold colors after researching a book that proposed there is a psychological process at work in which when the viewer's eye perceives adjacent colors, it intensify the other colors, such as putting red next to green. (Also, his ear-cutting episode was a result of Van Gogh's manic personality after he several times threatened to kill his roommate Gauguin with a razor;

• Sargent's masterpiece, Madame X, scandalized the female model and her family by depicting her gown's strap as having fallen off her shoulder. Sargent eventually repainted the strap to be on her shoulder, but the damage had been done. Unable to show or sell it, Sargant kept it for himself for years.

• Klimt's father was a gold engraver, giving the artist a familiarity with this glittery material which later became an integral part of his paintings, such as The Kiss.

History after history brings these artists, their paintings, and their world vividly to life for even art novices life me. I was captivated and therefore read all the artists' chapters, learning a wonderful amount of fascinating information about works I was familiar with as well as those I knew nothing about. The accompanying glossy reproductions of these paintings made clear all the points the authors referred to.

 

Whether you are an art connoisseur or just someone interested in creative people and the works that made them famous, this is definitely the book for you to skim, study the paintings, or read cover to cover as I did. You won't be sorry, and it will bring you great pleasure whenever you encounter one of these famous pieces or artists again. 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Shapiro, B.A. The Lost Masterpiece

Historical fiction about the life and masterpiece of Berthe Morisot, one of the original Impressionists, as well as the struggle for a modern day woman who inherits this masterpiece to hold onto it against pressures from others who claim it. (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 480 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

The Art Thief

Finkel, Michael. The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession. New York: Knopf 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

Approaching the  museum, ready to hunt, Stephane Breitwieser clasps hands with his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, and together they stroll to the front desk and say hello, a cute couple. Then they purchase two tickets with cash and walk in. 

It's lunchtime, stealing time, on a busy Sunday in Antwerp, Belgium, in February 1997.


Description:

The details behind true crime and the people audacious enough to attempt and often pull them off successfully is always a fascinating topic to me. In Michael Finkel's The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, we readers are presented with the almost unbelievable details of Stephane Breitwieser and his girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, both in their twenties, who in the late 1990s and early 2000s stole hundreds of art pieces from museums throughout Europe. They took paintings, chalices, firearms, crossbows, teapots, tapestries, figurines, coins, and even a 150 pound wooden statue. In short, they made off with anything that caught their discerning eyes.

The tools they used? A second-hand Hugo Boss overcoat, a large woman's handbag, and a Swiss army knife. That's it. Usually their grabs are right in front of guards, shielded from any security cameras, during regular museum hours full of tourists. They considered themselves artists, scornful of burglars who overpower guards (like the "savages" who committed the Gardner Museum heist) or sneak around in the dark (such as the theft of the Mona Lisa). 

[Side note: We learn from author Finkel that Pablo Picasso was the first person accused of masterminding the Mona Lisa theft since he had previously hired a thief to grab two ancient stone figures from the Louvre. The figures "had distorted faces, and Picasso kept them in his studio as templates...for the groundbreaking Les Demoisells d'Avignon."]

Breitwieser and girlfriend Kleinklaus averaged three heists every four weekends (when Anne-Catherine was off from work) for a decade, amassing a collection valued at over $2 billion (yes, "billion" with a "b"). But they never tried to sell even one piece of their accumulated art. Instead, they placed each piece in their attic apartment (the upstairs unit in Breitwieser's mother's house), and just admired the beauty of the art in a quiet, uncrowded environment all by themselves. No one else, maybe not even his mother, knew about their attic collection. "They lived in a treasure chest."

What were the origins of this crime spree, the motivations or psychological causes? How did they do it? Why did they pursue this behavior? And when, if ever, will they be caught? Author Finkel searches through newspaper articles, interviews, psychological reports, and courtroom transcripts to offer possible factors that brought Breitwieser to this obsession with art theft. And its a wild ride he takes us on to understand these two art thieves and to provide details of their escapades.

You cannot help but be caught up in this couple's boldness, their love of art, and their obsession to possess it and keep it secret from the world. Heist after heist unfolds in casual detail by Finkel, giving us readers an insider's view of the crimes and the minds of these two young people. It's a riveting, audacious book that is difficult to put down for the tension as well as for the descriptions of the beautiful art it presents. 

Stealing art for money, [Breitwieser] says, is disgraceful. Money can be made with far less risk. But liberating for love, he's known a long time, feels ecstatic.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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Dolnick, Edward. The Rescue Artist.   

When Edward Munch's The Scream painting is stolen from the National Museum in Oslo in 1994, Scotland Yard's Art Theft Department steps in. Led by Charley Hill, the department slowly tries to track down the thieves and recover the painting. Dolnick covers this chase as well as many other art crimes Hill has investigated. Riveting.(previously reviewed here)

 

Give Me My Father's Body

Harper, Kenn. Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo. New York: Washington Square Press 1986. Print

First Sentences:
 

Qisuk and Nuktqo were at Cape York already when the vessel hove into view. They recognized her from a distance -- it was the Hope again, the same chartered Newfoundland sealer that had come the year before...It was August 1897. This was Robert Peary's fourth expedition to northwestern Greenland, the home of the Polar Eskimos.


Description:

This is the true history of Minik, a Polar Eskimo (this is the author's historic term) who as a child lived alone in New York City at the turn of the century. Brilliantly, heartbreakingly told by Kenn Harper in Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo, this is a book that grabs you immediately for its uniqueness of story, characters, and setting. 

In 1897, Robert Peary, the polar explorer, returned to the United States from his most recent voyage to northwest Greenland. Among other treasures from this failed quest to reach the North Pole, Peary brought with him six Polar Eskimos. He felt these four unique adults and two children would be welcome gifts to be studied by anthropologists at the Museum of Natural History, (although the museum had not asked Peary to bring them any "live specimens"). 

All six Eskimos were scheduled to live in New York City for one season and then be returned to their home on Peary's next voyage. One of these Eskimos was Minik, a six-year-old child who had accompanied his father from Greenland.

Unfortunately, these newcomers almost immediately succumbed to pneumonia. Four died in the first months, including Minik's father. One Eskimo child was able to sail back home safely, but the now-orphaned Minik remained in the city where he spent months living in the museum basement, studied by scientists, and on display to the public. Eventually he was adopted by a wealthy family and began to live a new life of ease in America.

But that idyllic life was brief.

His adopted family became financially ruined. The museum, for their part, could not offer Minik housing or support. Peary did not want to any assume any responsibility for the boy and never communicated with child. Minik's life at a young age became that of an outsider, living on the streets in a foreign land, trying to learn a new language and the ways of Americans, without support from family, friends, or scientists.

Author Harper relates Minik's story in Greenland and New York, using his extensive research into diaries, newspaper articles, museum notes, interviews, and other documents of the day. Harper, who lived in the Arctic for over thirty years and is fluent in those native languages, also provides numerous photos of Minik, his family, museum scientists, and even Peary to better bring the book's narrative to life.

The book's title is taken from Minik's own words in trying to recover his father's skeleton from the museum. He had shockingly noticed that his father's bones were on public display in the museum along with his father's precious kayak, knife, and furs. Minik wanted to recover his father's bones and what were now his own rightful possessions, then return to his home in Greenland for a traditional Eskimo burial. With no cooperation from the museum and almost no ships equipped to sail that far north, Minik was forced to remain for years alone, without his father's remains, in the United States, apart from his true home.

I won't reveal whether Minik ever does return to Greenland. If he did return, one can just imagine what he might find there, what his reception would be, and whether he could even grow to stand the bitter cold of Northern Greenland. You'll just have to read the book to find out.

It's a gripping, fascinating, and deeply personal history of one person struggling to understand his old and new worlds. You won't regret picking it up and immersing yourself into the turn of the century world of exploration and science, and the life of one boy from a far-off land.

Happy reading. 

Fred

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Kroeber, Theodora. Ishi in Two Worlds.   

True account of Ishi, the last surviving Native American, a genuine Stone Age man, who was found in California in 1911. He had avoided all people outside his region for 40 years until his entire tribe including his family had died. The book chronicles his last years in the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco where he was studied for his fascinating, unique skills, lifestyle, and history. A wonderful, tragic look into humankind's past and survival techniques. 

The Feather Thief

Johnson Kirk Wallace. The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century. New York: Viking 2018. Print

First Sentences:

By the time Edwin Rist stepped off the train onto the platform at Tring, forty miles north of London, it was already quite late....

A few hours earlier Edwin had performed in the Royal Academy of Music's "London Soundscapes," a celebration of Haydn, Handel, and Mendelssohn. Before the concert, he'd packed a pair of latex gloves, a miniature LED flashlight, a wire cutter, and a diamond-blade glass cutter in a large rolling suitcase, and stowed it in his concert hall locker. 



Description:

Who could possibly be interested in the true crime of stealing feathers from a British museum? But in the hands of a skilled storyteller like Kirk Wallace Johnson, such a tale can become a gripping, informative read. This is the case with his recent book, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

Johnson opens the book with the step-by-step events of that June night in 2009 when 20-year-old flautist Edwin Rist broke into Tring Museum, a branch of the British Museum of Natural History. The Tring was the repository for the world's largest collection of aviary specimens. 

Overall, the museum houses one of the world's largest collection of ornithological specimens: 750,000 bird skins, 15,000 skeletons, 17,000 birds preserved in spirit, 4,000 nests, and 400,000 sets of eggs, gathered over the centuries from the world's most remote forests, mountainsides, jungles, and swamps.

The museum didn't even notice their loss for an entire month.

The remainder of the book is devoted to author Johnson's personal quest to answer these questions through conversations with feather collectors, police reports, news articles, and interviews with Rist himself. Through years of pursuit of the facts, the truth behind this odd crime are eventually revealed.

We are introduced to the world fascinated by exotic locations and newly-discovered biology of the mid-1800s. Johnson details the hazardous explorations of men such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace into the wilds of the Galapagos, Malaysia, and the Amazon rain forest to discover, capture, and provide evidence of new species to the world's museums. Through these observational studies particularly of birds, Wallace and Darwin simultaneously arrived on the theory of diversity and "Survival of the fittest." Their collected specimens offered evidence of their theory and thus were purchased and preserved in museums.

Yet Rist did not steal these historic specimens. He took only skins with the brightest plumage and for one purpose: to sell these rare and valuable feathers to the fly-tying community seeking to re-create beautiful Victorian-era salmon lures. These valuable lures require multiple feathers from rare birds, a fad begun in Victorian times when exotic birds were more plentiful. Feathers then were shipped to America and Europe regularly from far-flung jungles to supply decorations primarily for hats and other clothing. It was a highly-lucrative business in the 1800s and now had become even more so in the 21st century.

When the Titanic went down in 1912, the most valuable and highly insured merchandise in its hold was forty crates of feathers, second only to diamonds in the commodities market.

The author himself takes a personal interest after hearing about the heist during his own fly-fishing vacation. He became obsessed with returning the missing skins to the museum. To gather information, he entered the fanatical world of obsessive fly-tiers who would do anything to obtain desirable feathers. We also learn about the historical men who originally gathered the specimens and the museums who sought to document the animals for future scientific study.

It is a fantastically interesting book, full of surprises about a world of exotic animals and the people who obsessively study and use them in science and recreation. Historically, The Feather Thief opened for me an entirely new world of Victorian anthropology, fishing, tying, social fashion styles, and the efforts to provide the rarest of materials to satisfy a hungry market.

It's a wonderful book, even more gripping because it is a true account. It also packs a surprising ending, so I loved it from page one to the end.

Happy reading. 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Orlean, Susan. The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession .   

Non-fiction glimpse into one man's obsession with finding the "ghost orchid" in the swamps of Florida, and the underworld of rare flower theft and sales. Extremely well-written and fascinating.

The Museum of Modern Love

Rose, Heather. The Museum of Modern Love. Chapel Hill: Algonquin 2018. Print

First Sentences:

He was not my first musician, Arky Levin.

Nor my least successful. Mostly by his age potential is squandered or realized. But this is not a story of potential. It is a story of convergence....It is something that, once set in motion, will have an unknown effect. 

Description:

I know virtually nothing about performance art and artists, but that ignorance on my part is taken care of by Heather Rose in her newest novel, The Museum of Modern Love.

Based on an actual MoMA performance by the artist Marina Abramovic in 2010, author Rose imagines the minds and relationships of individuals experiencing a performance art piece. In the Abramovic performance, she sits along at a large table with an empty chair across from her. The public is invited to, one at a time, silently sit across from her and stare into her eyes for as long as they desire, then make way for the next person. Abromovic returns their look without a change in her expression, barely blinking, never talking. 

In the novel, Arky Levin, a composer undergoing an unexpected separation from his wife, stumbles into the Abramovic MoMO exhibit and is transfixed. He returns daily, studying the artist and the people who observe her in the art piece. Gradually, he even meets a few of them and we learn their stories, as well as the background of the artist. What Arky and the other public viewers experience tries to explain the goals and power of this style of art and its effect on their own lives and minds.

Pain is the stone that art sharpens itself on time after time.

Of course, there is the question of whether Arky or his new acquaintances will ever have the strength to sit down at the table across from Abramovic. If they do, what will they experience? They all have observed people leave their time at the table with Abramovic in tears, visibly shaken, although nothing has happened that anyone can see. Theories from the viewers abound about the artist herself: How can she sit so still without any reaction? How does she eat or control bodily functions during the hours sitting at the table? Why is she doing this piece? What does she hope to accomplish in this performance and with her other pieces (such as her months-long walk over half the length of the Great Wall of China just to meet her partner and break up with him)?

As I write this, it sounds like a very slow, uninteresting novel. But actually it is an oddly compelling narrative and insight into the minds and relationships of ordinary people, and how they (and the artist) react to a performance art piece over 70 days. Author Rose provides discussions about art, artists, and personal lives that show this static art performance to be full of life, expectation, goals, disappointments, and change. As a bonus, this book also offers the most interesting description I have ever read: a stream-of-consciousness narration from a person in a coma regarding what it feels like to be so attached and unattached to the world. 

I really enjoyed this off-beat novel for its quietly defined characters and their struggles with relationships and loneliness. Through their stories, I also was able to learn something about the purpose and power of performance art.

Even after all this time, the sun never says, "You owe me." Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole world. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Carey, Edward. Observatory Mansions.   

Another oddball book about a performance artist, this one who acts as a living statue and poses in public areas with people who want to take their photo with him. He also steals inconsequential, yet personally important items from people for his museum in the basement of his ancient home which also houses a variety of equally odd characters. 

Meet Me at the Museum

Youngson, Anne. Meet Me at the Museum. New York: Flatiron 2018. Print

First Sentences:

Dear young girls,

Home again from the deserts and oases of the Sheikdoms I find your enthusiastic letters on my desk. They have aroused in me the wish to tell you and many others who take an interest in our ancestors about these strange discoveries in Danis bogs.  

Description:

Sometimes you come across a book that really reaches you, one that you can't wait to read the next page, the next paragraph, the next sentence. You begrudge any task that stands between you and reading the book, regret when sleep overtakes you during nighttime reading, and can't wait to recommend it to anyone who loves good writing, character, and a sense that there is something really good in the world.

Such a book, for me, is Anne Youngson's Meet Me at the Museum. The plot, probably the least important part, starts with a gentle Thank You note from Tina Hopgood, a sixtiesh farmer's wife to the author of a study on the Tollund Man. (The Tollund Man is an actual figure who lived around 300 BC and whose body, skin, clothes, and rope burn around his neck were found perfectly preserved in the peat bogs of Silkeborg, Denmark. Tina's letter is answered by the new curator of the Tollund Museum, Anders Larsen, and a correspondence between the two begins.

As might be expected, over the coming weeks the letters wander away from the Tollund Man into areas of their vastly different lifestyles of his cloistered academic study and her outdoor farm life. They share thoughts about the lives they chose (or were chosen for them)  as well as concerns about their families, dreams, sadness, and joys.

Throughout this epistolary novel of letters, there is an overwhelming sense of two ordinary yet sensitive people reaching out to another thoughtful person they can finally open up to. A genuine respect for each other and communication emerges in their beautifully, honestly-written notes that gently, inexorably pull you in deeper and deeper. I simply could not resist reading what the next subject/thought/words would be from one paragraph to the next.

That's all you need to know to encourage you to go out and read this touching book. There's lots more that goes on and personal revelations that are vital to understanding these two lovely people, but I won't spoil anything. I loved it, give it the highest recommendation, and hope you will read and be caught up it these lives and words as I was.

 [For further reading, check out the Tollund Museum website]

Happy reading. 
    

Fred

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Hanff, Helene. 84 Charing Cross Road.   

A correspondence blossoms between a woman in New York City seeking specific books to purchase and a rare book dealer in London. They discuss books, editions, quality of writing, authors, and many other book-related topics as their relationship grows. Lovely, warm writing.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things

Hoffman, Alice. The Museum of Extraordinary Things. New York: Schribner. 2014. Print.

First Sentences:

You would think it would be impossible to find anything new in the world, creatures no man has ever seen before, one-of-a-kind oddities in which nature has taken a backseat to the coursing pulse of the fantastical and the marvelous.

Description:

I'm not really sure how to categorize Alice Hoffman's The Museum of Extraordinary Things. A romance? Historical fiction? Fantasy? Mystery? Character study? Really, it is all of these things and much more.

Coralie is the daughter of Professor Sardie, the proprietor of the small Museum of Extraordinary Things in 1911. The Museum is a collection of "Living Wonders" such as odd people, animals, and other freaks of nature placed on exhibit to the public vacationing at nearby Coney Island.

Coralie appears in the museum as a mermaid who swims in a giant tank under the observation of paying customers. She is rarely allowed outside the museum except for occasional swims in the Hudson River, where one night she spies a handsome photographer, Eddie, shooting pictures in the moonlight.

Eddie has his own demons as an immigrant Jew who fled Russia with his father. He becomes Americanized, changes his name from Ezekiel to Eddie, and strikes out on his own, abandoning his father and his faith, to become a photographer. He documents the historic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire where hundreds of workers, mostly women, died because they had been locked in their workrooms by owners who wanted to prevent workers taking breaks.

Eddie is persuaded to search for one young woman from that factory whose body was not dound among those who perished in the fire. As he unravels her story, her fate and the lives of Professor Sardie and eventually Coralie come together.

In 1911 the museum is facing competition from the new attractions of Dreamland, a lavish amusement park that will open soon to huge crowds, people who no longer are interested in the small sideshow offerings of the Museum. So Professor Sardie hatches a scheme for an attraction like no other, a new creature that will capture the attention of the world and bring back his audience ... with the reluctant assistance of Coralie.

The story is bracketed by two major events in America at the turn of the century: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the fire at the Coney Island Dreamland fire. This peek at turn of the century New York life also introduces readers to a variety of extraordinary characters including a mystic, a recluse, a grifter, an blind photographer, a scarred housekeeper, and many more. 

It is a strange story, full of wondrous people and events, a story that gently takes hold of you slowly until you cannot extract yourself from it by putting down this book. I was completely caught up in these conflicts and personal struggles, as well as absorbed in the historical events of the two great fires that changed the world at that time. There are the struggles of daughter and father, of father and son, that are recognizable to everyone, yet here played out with intelligence and emotion. And of course there is the compelling love story between Coralie and Eddie.

Love is the one thing that's not easy to find.It's an achievement, Eddie, to feel such a glorious emotion, whether it's returned or not.

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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Swyler, Erika. The Book of Speculation

A mysterious book of a magician's is passed from hand to hand between small carnival and circus performers, including someone known as a "swimmer," someone who can hold her breath for long periods underwater during performances. She searches for the history of this book and its importance. (Previously reviewed here.)

Morganstern, Erin. The Night Circus

Wonderful behind the scenes look at a circus and the lives of two young magicians competing to be the best in the world.

The Rescue Artist

Dolnick, Edward. The Rescue Artist: : A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece. New York: HarperCollins. 2005. Print.

First Sentences:

In the predawn gloom of a Norwegian winter morning, two men in a stolen car pulled to a halt in front of the National Gallery, Norway's preeminent art museum.

They left the engine running and raced across the snow. Behind the bushes along the museum's front wall they found the ladder they had stashed away earlier that night. Silently, they leaned the ladder against the wall.

Description:

There's something endless fascinating to me about crime capers: the people, the planning, the actual theft, what goes wrong, the pursuit by authorities, and the tension between escape and capture. Edward Dolnick vividly satisfies my tastes for true crimes of art theft in his riveting The Rescue Artist:: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece.  

The book open with the brazen theft of Edward Munch's masterpiece, The Scream, from the National Museum in Oslo, Norway, in 1994. Two men simply prop a borrowed ladder against the outside wall of the museum, break a second-floor window, lift the painting off its hook, climb back down the ladder, and drive off. Total time: 50 seconds. Alarms and video monitors were working but ignored by the guard on duty. No fingerprints or footprints were found, but the ladder remained propped up to the broken window. And the thieves left a note: "Thanks for the poor security." Value of the painting? $72 million. (In 2012, The Scream was sold for $120 million, the second highest art sale at the time.)

When Norway refuses to pay the thieves' demand for a $1 million ransom, Scotland Yard's Art Theft Department and Charley Hill, special art theft officer, goes to work, acting undercover as an agent for the Getty Museum in California who wants to pay the ransom for Norway so that they can borrow the painting and exhibit it later in their museum.

The trials and tribulations that result from Hill's undercover preparation and bold actions drive the book forward at a breath-taking pace. Hill must find out who the thieves are, contact them, persuade them to accept him as a credible buyer, and then get his hands on the painting to restore it to the National Museum. And he must deal with the well-meaning but interfering Norwegian police who are holding a convention in the hotel where Hill meets with the thieves.

Hill works with a variety of characters on this case from the police and the criminal world, weaving glib lies to make the sting work. His quick wit saves him on many occasions when plans are threatened as the unexpected occurs. But he has had a successful career. In twenty years, he recovered over $100 million worth of stolen art. 

Author Donick has done high-quality research to weave in many juicy tales of other art thefts. Interpol statistics document that art theft accounts for "between $4 billion and $6 billion a year." The ease in which art thieves operate is astonishing. Each job is simple, fast, and brazen, often just removing a piece off the wall and tucking it under a coat in front of many witnesses.

For thieves, stealing art is a tempting business. They steal "because they want to and can." There is a lot of very valuable (read "salable") unprotected art just waiting to be taken. Any amount of money gained by thieves is profit (since they paid nothing for the piece), so selling a $17 million artwork for $800,000 is fine by them. Beyond the simple payoff, there are other reasons motivating art thieves:

Thieves steal art to show their peers how nervy they are, and to gain trophies they can flaunt, and to see their crimes splashed across the headlines, and to stick it to those in power. Thieves steal, too, because they use paintings as black-market currency for deals with their fellow crooks.

One home in England was robbed several times just because it was isolated, too large to have quality security, and had so much art. One Rembrandt in England was stolen four different times. The Louvre supposedly had the Mona Lisa stolen in 1922 and never recovered it, and are displaying a copy now. The largest theft, occurring in Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, involved $300 million worth of art by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Manet, and Degas. No trace has ever been found of these painting, nor has any ransom note been received. 

Police are not particularly concerned with art theft as opposed to crimes that involve actions that harm people. It is expensive and time-consuming to go undercover to recover stolen pieces. The Scotland Yard Art Theft Department knew, despite its major victories in recovering valuable pieces, it must constantly prove its mettle merely to secure current funding.

"The police won't say so," remarks Charley Hill, "but what they think is, 'What's so important about pictures, anyway?' The attitude is, 'You've seen one, you've seen 'em all.'"

Here is a great, true caper story, complete with interesting characters, valuable art pieces, bumbled opportunities, genuine danger, and suspense woven into a detailed account. While The Scream theft is the prominent crime, The Rescue Artist provides plenty of other tales of crimes, criminals, and detective work to satisfy any mystery/art lover. Highly recommended for its fascinating details and well-written narration.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Irving, Clifford. Fake! The Story of Elmyr De Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time

Absolutely riveting true account of the life of a master forger in the 20th century who sold hundreds of fake paintings and sketches of Vermeer, Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani and more to many major museums and collectors, including Nazi leader Hermann Goering.

Shapiro, B.A. The Art Forger

Fictional tale of an art student hired to produce a fake Degas from the original, but as she studies the masterpiece and begins to create her copy, she begins to doubt its authenticity (previously reviewed here).

The Collector of Lost Things

Page, Jeremy. The Collector of Lost Things. New York: Pegasus Books. 2013. Print

First Sentences:

Perhaps I would be too late to save them. 

The last dozen had been spotted on a remote island in the North Atlantic, on a bare ledge of rock, but it was already rumoured the final breeding pair had been killed -- their skins sold to private collectors -- and the single egg between them needlessly crushed.  

These were only rumours, I kept telling myself. But as I set out for the Liverpool docks, on that breezy April morning in 1845, I couldn't help hoping that I might be able to reach them in time, the last of the birds. 

Description:

It is the most delightful of reading experiences to have a book give you a completely unexpected shock -- some twist in the plot, some unforeseen action by a character. Something that throws out all your smug little preconceived notions about how the book will continue, who is the good guy and who is the bad, and the eventual conclusion. Something that makes you stop, re-read the last paragraph, and then take a deep breath before continuing. The book has now been born again with new vistas opened and a clean or at least revised slate on all characters and plot. 

Now the reading fun begins. It is suddenly all new. You can only settle in and wonder what will happen next.

Such a wonderful book is The Collector of Lost Things by Jeremy Page. I was so completely caught unaware three, yes three, different times in this book that I looked around the room to find someone, anyone, I could tell about this story and the unexpected turn of events that just had occurred. (Note: I'm working to keep my mouth shut until asked about books, but sometimes, like a great secret, the goods are just too juicy to keep to yourself.)

Set in 1845, the novel opens with Eliot Saxby embarking on a sailing ship bound for the Arctic. His mission is to discover whether any evidence of the Great Auks, an extinct flightless bird, might possibly exist. Hunted by collectors and museums for their skins and eggs, these birds only recently became extinct, with the last living bird discovered five years previously on a lonely island near the polar ice. That bird was strangled and its eggs crushed by fishermen who thought it was a sea-witch. 

Saxby, a trained naturalist, harbors a secret hope that he might actually discover a living specimen on some forgotten island. While excited about the possibilities, he knows it is highly unlikely he will find anything, even a feather, much less a living bird.

There are two other passengers on board: Bletchley who wants to hunt arctic wildlife to prove his manhood, accompanied by his cousin Clara, a very sickly young woman who is embarking on the journey for unknown reasons.

Saxby immediately recognizes Clara as a woman from his past, but when he approaches her, she claims not to be the woman he thinks she is and to have no previous knowledge of Saxby. However, her secretive actions, her avoidance of questions, and her peculiar relationship with Bletchley all puzzle Saxby. 

Each person has hidden motivations that make their words vague and even suspect for their truthfulness. Who can be relied on and who should be suspected of bad intentions and outright evil? Who can be loved and who should be carefully avoided? Aboard the small boat, all activities fall under constant scrutiny, changing these answers again and again. These twists of plot and individual behavior pull you onward.

At the ice fields, everything changes again. The desolation of the endless ice, the cold, and the isolation challenge each person, including the captain and his crew, in different ways. Events on the ice bring new revelations about each character, casting a new light on their actions and the events still to come.

And, boy, can Jeremy Page write! His words reflect a slight Victorian style of formality and attention to emotions and detail, but without overwhelming the plot. The descriptions of the ship and sailing are absolutely first rate. 

Narrator Saxby, as a newcomer to sailing, ably describes the smells of the tar on the deck, the sounds of the sails catching the wind, and the shouts of the deckhands. From climbing up to the crow's nest to gazing over the bow to crouching in the hold where slaves were once transported, Saxby's observations and feelings are expressed with such clarity and emotion that a reader is completely absorbed into the world and population of the ship.

• [from the crow's nest] I closed my eyes. Sounds I had heard on deck -- the eerie shrill wind or the low moaning I'd heard from my cabin at night, the soothing sighs of ropes and canvas, the release and hold of iron fixings, or the creak of the mast, stretching like the tree it once was -- these sounds surrounded me, explaining their origin.

• [Getting the Amethyst underway] The air collected across the sail's face, a hesitant caress, then gently eased forward. Suddenly it filled in one smooth intake of breath and snapped taut, as if punched by a giant fist. At the same moment I heard the ropes stretch, and along their lines I saw a mist of droplets being wrung from them.

The Collector of Lost Things is a story of survival. Saxby feels he a person with the ability to save things, not just observe and collect them, and he dreams of finding and saving not only an Auk but also Clara who seems so sad and dominated by Bletchley. For after all, Saxby knows "a happy woman is a righted world."

And it is a story of ice, of cold, and of life. As Saxby relates:

I felt the presence of ice itself. Frightening, moving unpredictably, spreading in brittle sheets across the ocean -- reaching out with living intent for the small pocket of warmth that is brought with each person who ventures to the Arctic. It is as though the ice searches for the glimmer of fire that burns in the hearths, and the pulse of warm blood that flows through our veins.

This is a great book, one of the most captivating, encompassing, adventurous, and thoughtful novels I have read in years. I does not disappoint on any level. And remember - there are unexpected surprises awaiting!


Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Lansing, Alfred. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

Absolutely riveting account of Earnest Shackleton's ill-fated 1914 voyage to Antarctica and subsequent cross-country race for survival across the South Pole. His boat and crew are locked in by ice and only through incredibly heroic measures can Shackleton and his men hope to live. Riveting!

Mowat, Farley. Never Cry Wolf: Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves

Scientific but highly humorous notes from a naturalist studying the life and activities of the arctic wolf in northern Canada. Mowat is a tremendous observer of wildlife, willing to challenge accepted notions about these wolves in light of his first-hand experiences with them. Great read for all ages looking for fun, science, and wildlife behavior.