Four Renoir Paintings Stolen in Heist at French Museum
What the Renoir Heist Steals From Everyone
When thieves carry off paintings from a public museum, they do more than rob a building; they tax trust, culture, and the labouring poor by stealth.
The facts, so far as they are reported, are these: two thieves entered the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer on a Tuesday morning. The alarm sounded minutes before six, the police arrived quickly, the men fled, and in their haste they dropped two of the four paintings they had seized. Two works, still said to be worth many millions, remain missing. Almost a year has scarcely passed since a brazen theft from the Louvre, and already imitators try their hand at the same miserable trade. The scene is picturesque – a garden, an artist’s former home, the blue of the Mediterranean near at hand – and the conduct is sordid; it is a familiar human combination.
In my Theory of Moral Sentiments I argued that society may subsist without beneficence, but never without justice; the first is an ornament, the second a pillar. The thieves followed their own interest, no doubt; but they followed it by overturning that pillar on which their own security, and that of all their fellows, must ultimately rest. Self-love, when contained by the rules of justice, may guide the butcher and the brewer to serve the public; when it breaks those bounds, it guides the thief to serve himself alone, while making every man his enemy. To steal from a museum is thus not an ingenious speculation in art, but an assault upon the very conditions which make any market in art possible.
The visible loss, which the newspapers naturally magnify, is the market price of the missing paintings. Yet, as with all public crimes, the heavier part of the burden is neither numbered nor named. The museum must now spend more on guards, alarms, and barriers; each new lock is bought with money that might have refreshed a leaking roof or welcomed an additional school group. Insurance, if it exists, will not fall from heaven; its premium is a tax, scattered over tickets, donations, and perhaps the general revenue. The paintings, once open to the eyes of apprentices and tourists, may reappear only in some private chamber, where one vain man contemplates them and the public pays the bill.
When I wrote of the duties of the sovereign in the Wealth of Nations, I included not only defence and the exact administration of justice, but certain public works and institutions which, though useful to society, could never repay a private undertaker. A museum housed in an artist’s former home seems to me a modern specimen of that class. The state that encourages such establishments accepts, whether it avows it or not, a duty of protection. To punish the offenders, to recover the works, and to deter imitators is not a favour done to connoisseurs, but an obligation owed to the humblest citizen, whose modest taxes and patient labour help maintain the place.
Let us, however, not be content with indignation. The impartial spectator, well informed and disinterested, would condemn the theft; but he would also ask what incentives were laid before these men. A portable object worth millions is displayed, in a building that must remain open to the public if it is to fulfil its purpose. The same hand that arranges the exhibition must also provide the watch. If the penalties are slight, the security careless, and the market for stolen art – whether among crooked dealers or private collectors – tolerably active, then we should not be surprised that some misguided spirits calculate, and miscalculate, their chances. Exhortations to virtue weigh little against fortunes that can be slipped into a satchel.
After such a scandal, there will be no want of projects. Some will propose so many barriers, guards, and electronic contrivances that the museum will come to resemble a fortress more than a house of art. Others will demand new regulations, perhaps drafted by those same interests that stand to sell the locks and insurances they recommend. As I long ago observed, whenever men of the same trade consult together, the conversation tends toward a contrivance against the public; their petitions deserve the most suspicious attention. A security regime that protects masterpieces by quietly excluding the labouring poor, through higher prices or harsher scrutiny, is only a more respectable sort of theft.
The wiser course is seldom the grandest. To improve security where it is plainly deficient, to learn from each attempt without supposing that any system can make crime impossible, to cooperate across museums so that a stolen picture finds no reputable buyer – these homely measures sit better with the great chess-board of human society than do sweeping schemes that treat visitors as pieces to be pushed, rather than agents with principles of motion of their own. If justice is restored with firmness, and access preserved with humanity, the public may yet find that the unseen hand which guides their mutual dependence has more power to protect Renoir’s legacy than any number of locked doors alone.
From the works cited
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations — The sovereign's three duties (defence, justice, public works and institutions, including education for the common people) and the four maxims of taxation: equality, certainty, convenience, economy.
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments — Justice is the pillar whose removal crushes society; beneficence is the ornament that embellishes it — society can subsist without generosity, never without justice.
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments — Judge conduct by the impartial spectator: what would a well-informed, disinterested observer feel about this action? Praise-worthiness matters more than praise; to be loved without being lovely is worth nothing, and to be blamed unjustly stings less than to deserve blame.