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Published: 8 September, 2011

THE pair slipped into the gallery near closing time, as if they wanted to spend the end of a July afternoon catching  a tour of one of Frankfurt’s most prestigious galleries.

But instead of enjoying the art on display, which included two paintings by JMW Turner on loan from Tate Britain, they found a hiding place and waited for the public to be politely ushered out.

After the doors of the Schirn Kunsthalle Gallery were locked, the pair pounced.

They locked a guard in a broom cupboard and made a beeline for the Turners.

They hoiked the paintings, valued at £24million, off the wall before making their escape into the back streets of the bustling German city.

It was 1994, and the theft led to an extraordinary quest by the then Tate deputy director Sandy Nairne to recover the works.

Sandy, who lives in Kentish Town, has detailed in a new book how he became embroiled in an eight-year pursuit of these two important works, which the artist had bequeathed to the nation.

“The paintings were stolen in the middle of the night and I remember getting a call from Tate director Nick Serota that morning over breakfast,” he recalls. “It was a real shock.”

Sandy was told to bring his passport to work and he headed to Frankfurt.

It was to be the first of many trips to the city.

“So many works of art move around the world for exhibitions and are looked after very carefully.

Very little goes wrong, because so much goes in to making sure of it,” says Sandy, now director of the National Portrait Gallery.

“So to hear they had been stolen – well, I just couldn’t take it in.”

But what he did know was he wanted them back – that they had been pinched on his watch, and he wasn’t going to stand for it.

It was partly due to  the importance of the pictures.

Turner was aware of his place in the canon of British art, and left 3,000 works in a bequest.

It prompts the question: Why were these two, out of 3,000, so vital? Often with art thefts, pieces re-appear in private collections or at auctions years later and can be returned to the owner.

But the Turners, called “Shade and Darkness – The Evening of the Deluge” and “Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) – The Morning After The Deluge” were important for a number of reasons, and Sandy wasn’t prepared to wait.

“Turner wanted them to become part of the nation’s heritage,” Sandy says. “They are an extraordinary pair. They pre-date Monet and Modernism. They show Turner anticipating the Modernist movement.”

Yet as he stared at the blank space on the Frankfurt gallery wall, he had no idea where to begin.

Initially he wondered whether the theft had been ordered by a rich collector, the eccentric art lover often portrayed in fiction, or by a political group. Balkan gangsters – including the Serbian warlord known as Arkan – were rumoured to have ordered the heist. German investigators dismissed these theories, and told Sandy they felt the paintings had been taken “hostage” by criminals after cash.

As the book explains, it included con men throwing red herrings in the way of the pursuit, late night negotiations with petty thieves, and finally a meeting with a German lawyer called Edgar Liebrucks, who claimed he could recover the works but whose shady behaviour cast doubts over whether he could deliver.

Eventually Sandy did, through Liebrucks, get one back in 2000 – and it made him more determined to track down the other. But as his book reveals, he went back to Frankfurt five more times with the expectation the missing Turner would be returned safely.

Each time he had to face the disappointment of heading to back Kentish Town empty handed.
“Each time, people got spooked out,” he recalls.

But eventually, after £5million had been transferred to the lawyer’s bank account, the painting came home.

He recalls Liebrucks walking in to a hotel room, and tucked under his arm was a large blue canvas bag.
“It looked like it had been specially made for the picture to fit into,” recalls Sandy. “It was amazing to see it.”

People have been critical of the fact that money was paid, saying those responsible for the theft had profited. Sandy points out that every move made by the Tate was subject to examination by the British and German police, and was also considered by a High Court judge to ensure it was legal.

Sandy says it would not have been possible to do it any other way.

He believes the payment may have helped the police get closer to those who masterminded the theft.

“The thieves who took them were caught, but we also know they were not the organisers.

By handing over the cash it could help authorities follow the money to those responsible,” he says.

And it wasn’t a ransom, says Sandy, more a payment for information that led to their safe return.

Whether this can be justified or not, the bald truth is the paintings were nicked and are now safely returned for the us all to marvel at – and it is down to the dogged persistence and bravery of Sandy Nairne.

• Art Theft and the Case of the Stolen Turners. By Sandy Naire. Reaktion Books £20