Four famous paintings worth around $160m (£82m) were stolen by an armed gang earlier this month highlighting the need for galleries to have adequate insurance cover.
The art theft, which happened at the Emil Buehrle Collection, was one of the biggest in the world in the last 20 years. The Van Gogh and Monet pictures have been recovered in good condition.
But the Buehrle robbery came just days after two Picasso paintings were stolen from a gallery near Zurich.
Fine art insurance cover is split into three categories: the private collector, museums and corporations, and the commercial sector which is for dealers, valuers and restorers. The private collector market is the biggest, and under-insurance of pieces can be a problem.
Such a collection would usually be insured, according to Charles Hamilton Stubber, director of Aon Private Risk Management. If the paintings are insured, the pay out will depend on the basis of the valuation, he says: “Some museums do not insure for the total value. They purchase a first loss policy being a percentage of the total value. If the items are regularly revalued and scheduled on the policy, then that amount forms the basis of settlement.”
Such a large loss, if insured, would have an impact on the fine art insurance and reinsurance markets, Mr Hamilton Stubber believes. “Again, if this was insured and one took the values of £80m to be the total claim, this would have an effect across the fine art insurance market,” he told lloyds.com.
The fine art insurance market, of which Lloyd’s is the leader, can absorb such a substantial loss, one insider told lloyds.com. “It would be fair to say that awareness among uninsured owners or galleries of the benefits of insurance has been raised by these events, however,” the Lloyd’s source said. “Some might now reconsider their decision to not insure.”
The four paintings stolen in the latest raid were: Poppies near Vetheuil, by Claude Monet(1879), Count Lepic and his Daughters, by Edgar Degas (1871), Chestnut in Bloom, by Vincent Van Gogh (1890) and Boy in a Red Jacket, by Paul Cezanne (1888), police said.
Zurich police said that three robbers entered the museum just before it shut. Officers said one of the men used a gun to force 15 visitors and several staff to the floor. His two accomplices then seized the four paintings from a ground-floor display hall. The two recovered paintings were found in an abandoned car near the museum. The paintings by Degas and Cezanne are still missing.
Two Picasso oil paintings - Head of Horse and Glass and Pitcher - were taken from an exhibition in the Swiss town of Pfaeffikon in the earlier heist.
What will happen to the paintings? The paintings would never be able to be sold/exhibited in the open market. Art theft law enforcement authorities worldwide have become very sophisticated and work very closely with the art market and accredited organisations that trace, investigate and recover lost and stolen artworks, sources said.
“We are not aware the insurance market has ever paid out any ransom demands in an ‘artnapping’ case, so unless these four pictures are hanging in a house or stored in a vault, being used as collateral for loans, the chances are that the thieves will, over time, realise that the financial gain is not available and maybe in 2 /3 years time, the painting will reappear,” Mr Hamilton Stubber says.
Recent art robberies
2007 - Picasso's Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (worth £26m) stolen in Sao Paulo; later found.
2004 - Munch's Scream and Madonna (valued at £10m) snatched in Oslo; recovered in 2006.
2003 - Da Vinci's Madonna with the Yarnwinder (valued at £30m) stolen in Scotland; found in 2007.
