A historian has claimed that artwork by the famous Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck was stolen from a stately home 70 years ago. The reason behind the theft, according to the historian, was that the thief wanted to buy new curtains.

The mystery surrounding the theft of the original oil sketch in Northamptonshire has been solved, according to Dr. Meredith Hale from the University of Exeter.

The Portrait of Wolfgang Wilhelm of Pfalz-Neuburg, part of a collection of 37 oil sketches painted in the 17th century, was stolen in 1951 from Boughton House, the home of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry in Northamptonshire, in whose collection it had resided since 1682.

Its disappearance was only discovered six years later, when Mary Montagu Douglas Scott, Duchess of Buccleuch and Queensberry, visited one of Harvard University’s galleries and saw the sketch on display.

Now, thanks to an investigation by Dr. Hale, Senior Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture, the story of how the work of art made its way across the Atlantic, via some of the most prominent members of the art establishment in the UK and the United States of America, has emerged.

Dr. Hale spent a year sifting through correspondence from all the principal parties – including Christie’s auction house in London – to establish a remarkably precise timeline of when it changed hands and the inquiries that followed to prove its provenance.

The artwork has now been returned to its rightful owners, and the story of their quest for the truth is chronicled in a new paper in the British Art Journal.

Dr. Hale said: “Through new archival research in the UK, US, and Canada, I was able to reconstruct the painting’s movements over three generations, as it passed through the hands of experts, conservators, auctioneers, dealers, and collectors from London to Toronto.

“Not only do these sources reveal a dynamic picture of events as they unfold, but they highlight the factors that contributed to the success of the theft, foremost among them the conceptual and material complexity of Van Dyck’s Iconography project and the audacity of a thief cloaked in the respectability of expertise.”

That thief, says Dr. Hale, was Leonard Gerald Gwynne Ramsey, the editor of the journal The Connoisseur, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Ramsey visited Boughton in July 1951 with a photographer, to gather material for a seven-page piece for the journal’s 1952 Year Book.

Among the many objects that had been housed there for safekeeping during the war were the 37 wooden panels from Van Dyck’s innovative yet unfinished Iconography project.

Each panel featured an oil paint sketch of a prominent prince, scholar, military leader, or artist, and would have been used to create prints for sale.

Dr. Hale said that the sketch of Wolfgang Wilhelm was last recorded as being in Boughton in July 1950, and was located close to the door of a small storage room or bathroom, making it “probably the easiest one to abduct”, as suggested by Sir Oliver Millar, the then deputy surveyor of the Royal Collection.

Correspondence between Ramsey and art historian Ludwig Goldscheider revealed that the former intended to sell two paintings because he needed the money to buy new curtains.

As a result, Goldscheider supplied a certificate of authentication, which accompanied the Wolfgang Wilhelm picture when it was sold anonymously at Christie’s for 189 pounds in April 1954.

Dr. Hale traced the sale of the picture less than a year later to an art dealer in New York, before it moved on to a second dealer by March 1955, who had it cleaned and cradled.

It was then sold to a private collector, Dr. Lillian Malcove for $2,700, and she in turn donated it to the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University.

In her paper, Dr. Hale chronicles the increasingly terse correspondence between the Museum’s Art Director, Professor John Coolidge, and Ramsey, as the former attempted to establish the provenance of the picture once concerns had been raised by the Duchess.

Ramsey claimed he’d bought the picture from a market in Hemel Hempstead, and he also attempted to cast doubt on the authenticity of the picture – something corroborated by Goldscheider when he contradicted his earlier certificate of authentication.

With doubts growing, the museum returned the picture to Malcove in 1960, and upon her death in 1981, it was donated to the Art Museum of the University of Toronto.

Dr. Hale said: “As evidenced by the research presented here, we have finally been able to resolve the question of whether this was the picture stolen from Boughton.

“Consequently, the Executive Committee of the University of Toronto voted to deaccession the Portrait of Wolfgang Wilhelm of Pfalz-Neuburg and return it to the Duke of Buccleuch – 73 years after it was stolen.”

The investigation was conducted as part of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship into the group of Van Dyck panels at Boughton, with Dr. Hale scouring the Buccleuch archives at Boughton House, the Paul Mellon Centre archives in London, the archives at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Fogg Museum, Harvard University.

Dr. Hale added: “This is an important case because this was a particularly egregious breach of trust by Ramsey – a trust fundamental to scholars working in this field, and the museums and libraries who hold these priceless objects and artifacts.

“Furthermore, this was not just a single work of art, but part of a unique group of works left in Van Dyck’s studio upon his death in 1641.

“Without this painting, the Boughton oil sketches were like a puzzle that’s missing a central piece. Its return has now restored the integrity of the group.”

The theft and recovery of a grisaille by Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641): Portrait of Wolfgang Wilhelm of Pfalz-Neuburg is published in the latest edition of the British Art Journal.