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One of our readers (thanks D) has pointed
us to the recently published finale of the theft alluded to in Dr No. The portrait of the Duke of
Wellington by Goya seen in the movie was stolen from the National Art Gallery
in London and eventually recovered. Kempton Bunton, a 61-year-old unemployed
bus driver, confessed to the crime and spent three months in jail although he
was eventually found not guilty of nicking the painting only of stealing the
frame. It now appears that it was in fact his son John who did the deed.
Friday’s Guardian tells all:
“Just before dawn on Monday 21 August 1961,
John Bunton – a temporary van driver living not far away in digs off Tottenham
Court Road – stood on a parking meter to get over the gallery's back wall. He
then used a six-metre ladder left by builders to climb through the unlocked
window of a men's toilet to get into the main building of the gallery.
"The painting was standing on an easel
in a roped-off enclosure at the top of the main stairs. 'I went up to it, took
hold of it, and carried it back to the gents toilet,' he told the police. He
climbed back out of the window, down the ladder, and retraced his steps to the
back wall by St Martin's Street. 'I climbed over the wall, still holding the
picture in one hand ... I put the picture on the back seat of the car and drove
back to [his furnished room in] Grafton Street. I then put the picture under my
bed.'"
Bunton said that he hadn't carried a jemmy
and if the toilet window had been shut he would have had to give up. He had to
push-start the small black Wolseley that he used as a getaway car.
You can read more of this strange art story
here.
Images: Look and Learn magazine
illustrations for a story on the theft. Thanks to this new information we now
know they got the thief wrong and that the painting wasn’t taken off a wall.
The illustrations Recovery of the stolen
Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington are by Andrew Howat / Private
Collection / © Look and Learn / The Bridgeman Art Library
