The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece

by Edward Dolnick

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective.

The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries readers deep inside the art underworld -- and introduces them to a large and colorful cast of titled aristocrats, intrepid investigators, and thick-necked thugs. But most compelling of all is Charley Hill himself, a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm whose hunt for a purloined treasure would either cap an illustrious career or be the fiasco that would haunt him forever.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, True Crime, History, Crime, Mystery, Art History

433 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 28, 2005

About the author

Edward Dolnick is an American writer, formerly a science writer at the Boston Globe. He has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, and the Washington Post, among other publications. His books include Madness on the Couch : Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis (1998) and Down the Great Unknown : John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (2001).

Reviews

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book; the writing was engaging, the stories were great, etc. etc. Content gets 5 stars.

However, the lack of any organization to the story did frustrate me a bit. I am okay with (even fond of) stories that jump all over the place when it serves some aesthetic, quirky, or endearing purpose. This did not. The overarching story is about the theft and recovery of The Scream. Dolnick also includes other anecdotes and adventures of the detective Charley Hill. As a side note, this does read more like a compressed biography of Charley Hill than of the overall story of the Scream theft. This is all well and good and I thoroughly enjoyed all the narrative, however it jumps around like a spastic bunny rabbit. Here's a chapter about the Scream. Here's 2 chapters about other thefts. Oh and next we have a chapter that starts out about the Scream, but ends up about a Rembrandt theft. Then we pick up the Scream story again, just when I have forgotten all the names and have to figure out who is a thief and who is undercover.

Bottom line; loved it, will probably reread eventually, but just give me order, dammit!

[Saleh MoonWalker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Onvan : The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece - Nevisande : Edward Dolnick - ISBN : 60531177 - ISBN13 : 9780060531171 - Dar 270 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2005

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the Dolnick book on the Vermeer forgeries, this stacks up as a compendium of art-world scam and theft alongside of the central thread, which is about the Munch's Scream theft.

This time out, though, the compendium aspects outweigh the central thread, and by a long shot. The real value of the book is in the asides, the comparisons, the sidebar items. There, the depth of the research really shows, in spite of an overdeveloped appreciation of the main character, (who obviously charmed the author to pieces) the Scotland Yard investigator.

While it sounds like therefore the book isn't worth the read--- well, no, it's very worth it. It's not any less fascinating just because it's a thin story to hang the wealth of info from....

As mentioned elsewhere, there is something of a kinship in the creation of art and the forging or theft of art. Both are a kind of Confidence Game. These similarities are brightly underlined in this book and the Vermeer title; if you're intrigued by the relationship, I recommend you read both books, which are really like two volumes of the same study.

[Ms.pegasus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dolnick's well-researched book, written in 2005, tells two stories. The first is an art heist. On Feb. 12, 1994, two men propped up a ladder to the second floor of the National Gallery in Oslo. There was little grace or subtlety in their movements. On his first attempt, the thief scaling the ladder took a tumble! Afer re-ascending he smashed the window with a hammer and detached the targeted painting from the wall with a pair of wire-cutters (which he left behind!). He then shoved the painting down the ladder to his confederate. The painting was Edvard Munch's The Scream.

Dolnick treats his readers to fascinating details and speculations about both Munch, a severely depressed psychotic, and the paintings that reflected his haunting dreams. The paintings were powerful examples of a new movement. Once jeered at by both critics and the public, they are now emblematic of expressionism.

The second story Dolnick tells is a biography of a complicated Scotland Yard undercover detective named Charley Hill. Hill was the primary architect and player in the scheme to recover The Scream three months later. Hill posed as an American art connoiseur and upper echelon employee of the Getty Art Museum. Despite his Anglo-American parentage, Hill needed to consciously suppress any British colloquialisms and mannerisms at all times. He was entrusted with half a million dollars to purchase the purloined painting but needed to insure that he was obtaining the authentic item and not a cheap forgery.

Dolnick's goal is to transport the reader into the tension-filled and dangerous vibe that permeated the negotiations. Moreover, there were numerous glitches that could easily have gotten Hill killed or doomed the operation to humiliating failure. Dolnick reviews a number of other notorious art thefts to illustrate the mindset and dodgy connections of the people involved in this sort of crime. He highlights the combination of paranoia and greed that makes them dangerous. He also provides extensive biographical details about Hill's career which illustrate his complicated personality. Hill is a genuine art lover with a good eye for detail. His intellect is narrowly focused on the minutiae yielded in art history tomes. He is also an adrenaline junky who thrives on the cat-and-mouse confrontations with dangerous criminals that form the core of his work. He stands apart from his colleagues in that he subscribes to the goal of rescuing the art objects rather than capturing the criminals.

These detours are often frustrating. The narrative only really picks up momentum when Dolnick returns to the details of the recovery operation. Impossible to imagine bungling forces Hill to improvise on the spot – yet another talent he fortunately had cultivated over the years.

Despite a successful outcome, Dolnick ends on a pessimistic note. As long as prices for art continue to skyrocket and institutions lack both the cash and the will to institute sophisticated protective measures, art theft will remain the low-hanging fruit of the criminal world.

[Jan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the most boring books I've ever read. I was fastinated by the first chapter, describing in detail how the famous painting, "The Scream", was stolen from the National Museum in Norway. I managed to stay with the rest of the book only because I wanted to find out if the painting was recovered, and how. Unfortunately, the author kept backtracking and side stepping, going into incredibly tedious detail about other famous paintings that had been stolen. To save my sanity, I had to finally skip some of the pages toward the end, because the story just wasn't getting anywhere. I caught up with it in the last couple of chapters, and didn't feel I'd missed anything important. Glad it's over.

[Jennifer S. Alderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible story! This is as thrilling as some of your better fiction reads, yet is all true. I would love to have a beer with Charley Hill.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about how real art detectives work.

[Will Horvath · Rating 4 out of 5]

After looking through the reviews of The Rescue Artist on Goodreads, there seemed to be mixed feelings about this book. The majority were positive, as the book was an average of 3.77 out of 5 stars. This number proves this book is a good read since the average cumulated from over 2,600 reviews. Since the book brings different elements together, like the Winter Olympics, famous paintings, and crime mysteries, I agree with Kendra, who gave the book 5/5 stars. Other reviews mentioned how involved they felt in the reading and seemed to get a good idea of who Charley Hill is.
On the other hand, some readers didn’t vibe with this book. After going over some of the 1/5 star reviews, a similarity seemed to be the unnecessary depth the author took on the art pieces themselves. One went to the extremity of calling this one of the most boring books ever as the author went into too much detail on the paintings. According to one reviewer, Caroline, it was a great story but had too much language. I believe if art history is not your cup of tea, then this book is not for you. It is unfair to critique this book if the topic itself isn’t something that interests you. Some reviewers followed my idea as they simply put the book down since it wasn’t getting the juices flowing. Overall, the people had mainly pleasant remarks about The Rescue Artist; however, there will always be the haters.
The type of reader who would be most interested in this book would be either a history buff, artistic person, or mystery lover—these three categories sum of the book’s theme. I’ll start by combining history with art since this book features many world-famous pieces of art. Anyone intrigued by old paintings will love this book as, as mentioned earlier, the book goes into fine detail about each painting’s past. It adds just enough art history to be both entertaining and educational. If art isn’t your go-to reading topic, don’t leave just yet. The book still has a mysterious plot as it goes through the recovery process of Edvard Munich’s The Scream. It balances between Hill’s (the detective) life in this field of work and other art theft stories.
A weakness of the book is it takes some time to get into. If you are waiting for the plot to develop, it doesn’t occur right away. Rather, the first half is heavy towards the art’s history. Going along with this is the detail the author goes into on the artworks. This can be a pro or con depending on the reader’s interests. I think the book has many strengths that I covered previously. In conclusion, I believe the book is a hit or miss depending on the reader, but worth a shot if you are looking for a read.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've decided that art theft books are becoming my new thing. Just finished this one up last night. It was really good, though a bit confusing at points because of all the names. Maybe I was reading it too fast.

It's the story of Charley Hill, a Scotland Yard undercover police officer, who recovered Edvard Munch's The Scream after it was stolen off Oslo museum walls in 1994. Dolnick weaves the recovery story through stories of Hill's life as well as stories of other art thefts and recoveries. It's suspenseful, educational and entertaining.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

It had a great story, but there was too much language.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have always been fascinated with art heists, and this book covers (mostly) one of the more infamous ones. A lot of the information, as well as coverage of other notable thefts and personalities, I have read about before, but still there were interesting tidbits and material I was unfamiliar with. At times I felt the text was padded and could have been more streamlined, but overall I enjoyed the book.

[Audrey Approved · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read Dolnick's The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone in 2022 and absolutely loved it. For a comprehensive history of the Rosetta Stone, you can't go wrong! As such, I felt super optimistic picking up The Rescue Artist considering I've had such good luck with this author, and I absolutely LOVE art history nonfiction. Unfortunately, I felt a very differently about The Rescue Artist compared to The Writing of the Gods. While the blurb implies that this is going to be a piece of historical nonfiction about the robbery of Munch's The Scream, in reality it is an investigation of art larceny, the story of The Scream (but also a lot of other stolen art), a mini biography of an art crime detective, and random facts about art valuation. All the content is interesting, don't get me wrong - but the constant jumping around, wandering and allover meandering was frustrating and greatly interrupted the flow of the content.

2.5/5 stars but rounded down b/c I was so frustrated w/ the organization!

[Silvia Cachia]

Non fiction as engaging as a great novel. Dolnick introduced me to a fascinating world of which I knew nothing, the world of art crimes and art rescues. The Scotland Yard real cop, Charles Hills, an unusual person with a fascinating past and outlook to life and his mission in it, was a pleasure to meet.

The book is mainly about the theft of one of the four Scream paintings (the most famous of the four copies by Munsh), and its recovery. Along the main event, Dolnick takes some detours in some chapters to include past cases in which Hills recovered art, and a bit of the history of how art thefts have changed across the centuries.

The book has two sections with generous pictures of some of the works and people mentioned in it. I loved to see how those villains and cops look like, as well as the works of art they managed to steal.

I was transported to Oslo, and London, and also to the minds of these peculiar people, (from art dealers of dubious reputation, to true mafiosos, gangsters, thugs of different nationalities and flavors.

If anything, the book is a bit heavy on language, but if someone talks like that, it won’t be fair to edit the person’s talk, right? Another fascinating factor in the book is the American/British accents. Charles Hills has to maneuver back and forth, depending who he is impersonating, and his act needs to be natural, so he had a couple of difficult situations when the wrong idiom slipped.

I recommend it. I’m going to continue reading more by this author. He seems to deliver good non fiction.

(I have to say that between those two books, The Clockwork Universe was better. Dolnick, maybe because of his science background, was amazing explaining why, when, and how calculus came to be ‘discovered’. He managed to explain difficult concepts without making any part of the book dry or difficult to follow.

He has a new title coming up in June, The Seeds of Life. It sounds like a perfect summer reading to me!

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was like...Ocean's 11 meets Monuments Men, meets Billionaire's Vinegar. Full of swashbuckling thieves, a now-nostalgic 1990's era, millions of dollars of, incidentally, priceless art, and a reverse Artful Dodger who acts as undercover agent to ingratiate himself in the seedy underbelly of big money theft in order to hang a missing Bruegel back on its rightful wall. The story of the recovery of The Scream is woven in and out of other various tales of big time art theft, dating back a century and up to relatively present day. Dolnick also gives us a pseudo-psychological study of art's hero, Charley Hill, the guy who risks his life for an old canvas and hardly bats an eye. The first half of the book starts out as a page-turner as we are hot on the trail of Munch's masterpiece, but this plotline loses a bit of steam towards the end. That being said, this was an easy read on a fascinating subject, driven by a story that truly compels, even if it runs out of gas by the last page.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected to like The Rescue Artist more than I did. Drawn in by the opening story, the 1994 theft of Munch's The Scream, I was set for a meandering narrative about the hunt for it and its thieves. However, about half way through the book I began to lose interest in the side stories about detective Charley Hill's past exploits. Since the book was more about Hill than The Scream, I should have set the book aside. Instead I plodded through, genuinely wanting to find out about this particular crime. By the last section, I was skimming through, reading only the parts relevent to the Scream. I think I would have enjoyed a nice magazine article about the crime more.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is really 3 narratives- the tale of the theft of the Scream, a brief history of art crime, and the biography of an art crime detective. The three narratives are not woven together well, which is actually fortunate since it allows one to more easily skip the excessively adoring biography of the detective. The other two narratives were interesting, but, at least with respect to the theft and recovery of the Scream, a magazine article on the subject would have sufficed.

[Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rated this book a 4 star. I thought this book had its ups and downs, but a lot more positive than negative. The book had a lot to share with the reader. I agreed with the majority of people that rated the book that the information in this book can get a little overwhelming at times. I felt as if the primary focus of this book wasn’t really the main story which was the hunt to find the Scream. It felt as if it was really just a bunch of factual information on previous art thievery from before this whether it had been solved by the main character, Charles Hill, or not. The main story I also felt didn’t really start getting real good until the last fourth of the book. Moving on to character development. The main characters in the book apart of the Bureau I felt developed very well when there story was being talked about. It stayed persistent from beginning to end of seeing them grow. The most developed one by far was definitely Charles. He was the lead role and his skills increased as the case got more and more dangerous to deal with like setting up this prop trap and managing to make a deal with the thieves in the parking lot in the middle of the night and getting away with it. Finally I learned a lot with the information about the arts being stolen even though it was a lot to handle. It is certainly mind blowing how much art is actually stolen through out history and how easy it was back then to do so. Some of the art stolen was just taken off a wall and they left with it as easy as it sounds. Today art is so much harder to steal than what it was before. In conclusion the book overall was great. Very factual and cool to see what someone’s journey was like in this career field. It shows the dangerous work people have to go through in this space. If I had to change anything about the book, it would be to focus a lot more on the main story with little bits of other facts every once in a while. I thought I was going to be bored out of mind with this book, but in the end, I enjoyed very much!

[Bubba Gonzalez · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful work of art history that isn’t really mentioned as in depth as it is in this book, outside of sensationalized media (national treasure, white collar, heist movies in general). But i also haven’t read other books on the art underworld so i could be wrong.

The book delves into the world of art crime and all its unglamorous and often times plain stupid theft attempts, successes and the thieves themselves. The only reason i took a star is because of the way the book is organized. It takes breaks from the main story to give you information on other thefts, breakdowns of museum security and how art insurance works and backgrounds on various players in the art underworld. The information and stories of other thefts are entertaining and appreciated, i just felt it could have been worked into the book better.

Overall a very enjoyable read, if not only to enjoy the star of the book, a Scotland Yard art theft detective named Charley Hill. A movie should be made about this guy.

[Audrey Ashbrook · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Rescue Artist by Edward Dolnick is a non-fiction art crime book following the 1994 break-in and thievery of the masterpiece The Scream (created in 1893) by Edvard Munch. On the case is Charley Hill, an art detective and master of chameleon-like behavior useful for going undercover in order to infiltrate the underground illegal stolen art market and recover masterpieces. 

This was an excellent book. Dolnick not only covers the case of The Scream, but also several other thieveries of other great paintings throughout the years. It was a very fascinating read. Charley Hill was also very interesting to learn about; he was very intelligent and daring, and I can't believe the scrapes he was able to get himself out of. I recommend this book to anyone interested in true art crime. 

[hannah cottrill · Rating 4 out of 5]

|| 4 ⭐️ ||

Art theft and the recovery of priceless stolen pieces is such an interesting topic for many reasons. Dolnick is a remarkable storyteller, and nobody could tell the story in a more engaging way than he does. We are given the story of The Scream by Edvard Munch—plenty of detail regarding who Munch was, the stuff he painted, this specific painting itself, its incredible (as in dumb, shouldn’t have happened) theft in 1994, and everything that led up to its final recovery by Charley Hill a few months later. Woven throughout were some of the details of other art thefts throughout history, and I ate those side stories up as well. This was really splendid and I learned a lot about this side of art history.

[Ben Peyton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fund read. Apparently, stealing art isn't as hard as I thought it would be. I'm considering a career change now......

Either way, it's a good, quick read and very interesting. It is part-history, part-bio. It looks at the history of art thieves and the world that art thieves work in and it is also a deep-dive into the life of the world's top detective that finds stolen art pieces. I liked this book a lot. I would recommend it.

[Carla]

A favorite subject but the narrative is scattered. Dolnick wants us to understand something about the stolen art ; so detours into paintings & painters are, he thinks, unavoidable. This results in deflecting from the thefts and the rescue artist ,Charlie Hill.

[Eva_812 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I certainly didn't know how often art gets stolen! This was a fascinating read (though the way this was turned into an audiobook did leave somewhat to be desired, to my taste) and with rather entertaining anecdotes and people.

[Pamela Allegretto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the author often went off on tangents, they were such fascinating tangents that I began to look forward to them. This non-fiction reads like a well-crafted fiction.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just want to point out that my profile pic is a comic version of the central artwork of this book. 😉

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book I read by this author -I know I will read others. He is funny and engaging - and this one won an Edgar!

[Jennifer Wehling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some parts were super interesting and others not so much.

[Daphyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a fun read.

[Abby Rosselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this one for my True Crime book and it definitely wasn't a book I would normally choose for myself. I'm super into art, but it was SUPER interesting how "artnapping" is a thing.

[Dee Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

PAINTING: The Scream, by Edvard Munch, 1893

This non-fiction work details the theft of Edvard Munch's most famous painting, The Scream, in 1994--just as the Winter Olympics were beginning in Norway, a real 'screw you' to authorities there. It wasn't recovered untii nine years later; the subject of the title is a Scotland Yard detective named Charlie Hill, a controversial figure who planned and executed its recovery. The Scream is a mixed media work, some of which had been done in chalk, and the entire piece is on cardboard, so it's extremely fragile. Who knew?

I learned a good deal about the international network of art theft. These people don't look like Pierce Brosnan, Sean Connery or Catherine Zeta-Jones--they're merely thugs, more often than not also dealing in drugs and guns. They have no respect for art and the fair market value of any work is not of much interest. Because they pay nothing for the art they steal, even a few thousands for a painting worth millions is considered a win, because it's all profit. They are in no way stewards of the artworks they steal; nine of ten stolen paintings are never recovered. One art thief's mother cut up 60 famous paintings and consigned them to the garbage "under coffee grounds and egg shells" when authorities were closing in on her son! They are, however, extremely aware of who the police are and can spot them a mile away:

"In the world of art crime, one detective has an unmatched résumé. His name is Charley Hill. The aim of this book is to explore the art underworld; Hill will serve as our guide. It is odd and unfamiliar territory, dangerous one moment, ludicrous the next, and sometimes both at once."

An example of the ludicrous: at one point in the delicate negotiations involving The Scream, Det. Charlie Hill was stunned to see a police convention occurring in the same hotel, swarming the very lobby where he and his thieving counterpart were meeting --what were the odds of THAT?! The thief immediately recognized the cop surveilling them for Hill's protection, left Charlie and walked right up to the other man to confront him. Hill had to think fast to cover his butt and ensure old friends didn't come up to "slap him on the back" in a fond hello that could have cost him his life.

Dolnick did a lot of research for this book, just as he did for Dinosaurs at The Dinner Party, and the reader will learn about famous art thefts throughout history:

"...[T]he yoking together of the words “art” and “crime” so much a joining of the sublime and the grimy, that the art community tends to avert its eyes and hope that the whole nasty subject will go away. Which is fine with the thieves. For art crime is a huge and thriving industry. Crime statistics are always dodgy, but Interpol, the international police agency, reckons that the amount of money changing hands in the art underworld comes to between $4 billion and $6 billion a year. On the roster of international illicit trade, art crime is number three, trailing only drugs and illegal arms. In Italy alone, where it is common for a tiny village to boast a church with a fifteenth-century altarpiece, police say that thieves make off with a museum’s worth of art each year...In comparison with even middling banks in midsized cities, the world’s best museums are as open as street fairs. Security is neglected, too, because even the greatest museums face chronic money shortages."

"In the United States especially, museum guards are poorly paid and poorly trained. 'The people protecting our art,' says security specialist Steven Keller, 'are the ones who couldn’t get jobs
flipping burgers.'”

As for the theft of The Scream, Norway was, of course, no part of Scotland Yard's jurisdiction. "Far from Norway, a small group of men followed the case intently. They were Scotland Yard detectives, members of an elite group called the Art and Antiques Unit, better known simply as the Art Squad. The story broke over the weekend. Monday morning, February 14, 1994, first thing, the head of the Art Squad phoned his best undercover man. 'Charley, did you hear about The Scream?' 'I watched it on the news last night.' 'Do you think we can help?' Officially, another country’s stolen painting had nothing to do with Scotland Yard. The hunt for The Scream was certain to be tricky and expensive and likely to be dangerous. 'Tell me again,' the police higher-ups were sure to demand, 'why is this our problem?' It wasn’t a bad question. The honest answer, in Detective Charley Hill’s words, was that the case had 'sweet fuck-all to do with policing London. But it’s too good to miss.'" At one point a delivery was to be made in Belgium, but Belgium law forbade an outside agency from conducting investigations in that country, so they rerouted to Antwerp. Hill convinced the art dealer with whom he was negotiating to ignore any potential implications.

"Scotland Yard had begun mulling over the case as soon as the story broke, before it had any official role to play. The first challenge, the detectives on the Art Squad reckoned, would be to devise a way to lure the thieves out from hiding. 'What can we use as a plan?' John Butler asked Charley Hill. 'Give me a quarter of an hour, and I’ll think of something...' For a restless, moody man like Hill, life tethered to a desk was purgatory. On the other hand, few pleasures matched the thrill of dueling with a crew of cunning, malevolent thieves. Hill put down the phone and leaned back contentedly in his chair."

This is where the narrative falls short, from my perspective. Dolnick's Rescue Artist is a jumble of contradictions:

"'His work routinely involves dealing with 'vindictive, cunning, violent thieves,' and the danger is not a cost but a bonus. 'I think the real reason Charley volunteered for Vietnam,' remarks one friend who has known him since they were both teenagers, 'is that he finally figured out that nobody gets killed playing football.' If Prince Valiant and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe shared custody of a single body, the amalgam might resemble Charley Hill." The problem is, Dolnick vacillates between idolatry and condemnation of Charley Hill. That would be ok, except that it overtakes the book and goes on interminably.

"...[H]e tried on and quickly rejected an entire wardrobe of possible lives. After Vietnam, he moved on from his security guard job and studied history at George Washington University. Then he won a Fulbright scholarship to Trinity College in Dublin, taught high school in Belfast, studied theology in London, and eventually landed a job on the metropolitan police force in London. The police work led eventually to undercover work in general and to art cases in particular...'We never stopped worrying about if he could hold it together,' said a friend who had stayed close to Hill since they were both sixteen. 'He wanted to be a priest, and at the same time he was prepared to beat people up and shoot them and kill them. That’s not about conflicting goals, that’s about the Three Faces of
Eve.'”

Every time a painting is mentioned, I raced to look it up on my phone, and I learned so much in doing that! We all know Vermeer's painting of the girl with the pearl earring, for example, but I had no idea he only painted 35 works in his entire life--with 11 kids runing around at home (well, small wonder). I learned about a delightful painting, Gilbert Stuart’s Skater (Portrait of William Grant), showing a very natural pose in ice skating, which also recorded for history what ice skates looked like in the 1800s. And much more. I learned from Munch's own words that the nightmarish red sky in The Scream was not some hallucinogenic vision but real, and may well have been what Norway could see of the 1883 volcanic explosion of Krakatoa, the largest in human history, which blotted out the sun with particles that simulated winter all over the globe for two years:

"'I was walking along the road with two friends,' he recalled years afterward. “The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red.' For years, Munch grappled with the memory of that sunset and labored to capture it in paint. The date of his evening walk has lately stirred a debate—1883 and 1886 and 1891 all have their partisans—because it now seems likely that poor Munch, his nerves already aflame, happened to witness one of the astonishing meteorological sights of all time. At 10:02 in the morning on August 27, 1883, half a world away from Norway, the volcano on the island of Krakatoa erupted. The island vanished from the earth, blasting itself apart into the heavens. Six cubic miles of rock, rendered into pumice and dust, rained down; smaller particles wafted high into the atmosphere. In the months to come, those floating particles drifted around the world and created sunsets that blazed and glowed with colors of an intensity and splendor no one had ever seen. The New York Times reported, on November 28, 1883, that “soon after five o’clock the western horizon suddenly flamed into a brilliant scarlet, which crimsoned sky and clouds. People in the streets were startled at the unwonted sight and gathered in little groups on all the corners to gaze into the west....The clouds gradually deepened to a bloody red hue, and a sanguinary flush was on the sea.” More stolid observers than Munch lost their bearings. In Poughkeepsie, New York, a team of firemen harnessed their horses to their pump wagon and raced toward the setting sun to fight the inferno on the horizon. In Oslo, on November 30, 1883, a newspaper reported that “a strong light was seen yesterday and today to the west of the city. People believed it was a fire: but it was actually a red refraction in the hazy atmosphere after sunset.” Was this the sunset that Munch witnessed?"

"Half a century later, after the deaths of millions in two world wars and the threatened death, from atomic bombs, of everyone else, those feelings [depicted in The Scream] resonated across the globe...[and today] "The central figure of The Scream, one art historian proclaims, is now “the counterpart to the familiar smiley face.” Poor Munch--after a traumatic childhood and then being brutalized by a former lover, he would be devastated to learn his most emphatic work has become a common meme.

For the author's endless back-and-forth-on the-fence about his detective, I took off two stars. Still, the rest of it was solid and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to explore the world of art as I hadn't, before now. The Rescue Artist was published in 2005, while Dinosaurs in The Dark was published August 26, 2024 and really shows how far his writing has come. Ok, I gave him back one star.

[Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm on a bit of a kick reading lots of books about the dark economy and a wealthy people hiding money and buying privilege the same way organized crime does, and this book fits into that pattern. It's an interesting account of art thieves, but it's very disorganized and bounces all over the place with lots of digressions. Granted, they are interesting digressions, but they are still distracting from the story and make the number of different a people, stories, and timelines a bit hard to follow.