A painting by the Scottish artist Joseph Farquharson was among a collection of art stolen "to order" by rogue art dealers or collectors from a house in England, police said yesterday.
A gang stole £200,000 worth of paintings from the home of an elderly collector in the Cotswolds area, including a landscape by Farquharson worth £150,000.
Burglars broke into Diana George's eight-bedroom house and escaped with five other "high-value" pictures, along with various items of antique furniture while she was asleep in the house.
The 89-year-old said she had been left "heartbroken" by the theft from the house in Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, and said none of the art had been insured.
Five paintings by George Edwards Hering and William Frederick Witherington were also stolen, along with a grandfather clock and a mahogany wine cooler.
Mrs George, a widow, was one of five people in the house when the gang broke in through a window.
"It was devastating to come downstairs and see hooks where the pictures had been," she said.
"They knew what they were doing and what they were looking for and they must have been very quiet, because no-one heard a thing.
"I hadn't insured any of the paintings because I never thought we would be burgled."
The stolen Farquharson painting - Sunlight and Shadow - was bought by Mrs George's late husband Philip in the 1970s for just £500.
Since then the 19th century Scottish artist's work has risen significantly in value and the picture had recently been valued at £150,000 by Sotheby's, the auction house.
Farquharson, who combined a career as a painter with his inherited role as a Scottish laird, was born in Edinburgh in 1846, of an Aberdeenshire family, and studied at the Royal Scottish Academy in the capital, and Paris.
Although in 1885 he visited Egypt and painted some Middle Eastern scenes, he is best known for his many snow scenes, in which shepherds and sheep, usually toiling against large skies, are prominent. In his later life he lived in Aboyne in Aberdeenshire, where he was known as the Laird of Finzean, and he died in 1935.
The painting had been left by Mr George to his daughter, Griselda, 57, in his will, and she was planning to insure the painting just days before it was taken.
A spokesman for Gloucestershire Police appealed for art dealers and auctioneers to contact them if they are offered the stolen paintings or antique furniture.
Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 0845 090 1234, or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
Leading thefts
- Perhaps the most valuable theft ever was committed in 1990 when the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston was robbed. The two thieves removed works of art whose value has been estimated as high as £200m.
- In August 2003, two men dressed as tourists taking a public tour of the Duke of Buccleuch's Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfriesshire, overpowered a tour guide and stole Leonardo Da Vinci's Madonna of the Yarnwinder. It is thought to be worth £25m to £50m.
- In December 2002, two thieves used a ladder to climb to the roof and break in to the Vincent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Two paintings were stolen, valued at £20m.
- Edward Munch's masterpieces, The Scream and Madonna, suffered minor damage after they were stolen by masked gunmen in August 2004 from the Munch Museum in Oslo. They were recovered in 2006.
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