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In 1951, a leading British art expert visited a stately home in Northamptonshire and viewed its paintings by old masters alone because the owner was ill.
Six years later, the wife of Boughton House’s owner popped into an American museum, where she was struck by a vivid portrait of a German prince by Anthony van Dyck that looked just like theirs. She was to discover that it was the very same painting by the 17th-century Flemish court painter to King Charles I, stolen from them.
Now, 35 years after his death, the culprit has been exposed as that expert, LGG Ramsey, according to investigative work by Dr Meredith Hale, a senior lecturer in art history at the University of Exeter.
Ramsey, having been the editor of a leading art journal, the Connoisseur, at the time was the picture of respectability. But Hale has uncovered evidence that he was a “gentleman thief” who, on visiting Boughton House, stole The Portrait of Wolfgang Wilhelm of Pfalz-Neuburg.
Perhaps he assumed no one would notice the absence of a small painting from “the English Versailles”, which was filled with pictures, furniture and tapestries.
In a paper to be published this month by the British Art Journal, Hale writes of a “remarkable theft”.
The portrait is one of 37 oil sketches by Van Dyck and his studio for his Iconography print series. The unique group of grisailles – paintings in monochrome – was bought in 1682 by Ralph, Earl of Montagu. All the panels, circa 22cm x 16.5cm, remained with his descendants, the Dukes of Buccleuch and Queensberry, until the 1951 visit by Leonard Gerald Gwynne Ramsey.
At the time, Ramsey was preparing the 1952 edition of The Connoisseur’s Year Book, which was to feature seven pages on Boughton House.
Hale said: “Oddly, but significantly … the Van Dyck sketches were not mentioned in the article.”
She unearthed a 1953 letter from another expert, Ludwig Goldscheider, who authenticated the picture at Ramsey’s request and provided a certificate on the back of the portrait’s photograph.
In 1954, the painting was sold by Christie’s London, which highlighted Goldscheider’s certificate. While the seller was anonymous, Hale discovered it had been consigned by the Bond Street dealer Eugene Slatter on Ramsey’s behalf.
Each was linked through The Connoisseur, Hale realised. Ramsey edited the journal, Goldscheider published scholarly articles there and Slatter’s exhibitions were routinely praised.
A collector, who bought the Van Dyck at Christie’s for £189, sold it to a dealer, who sold it in 1955 for $2,700 to a New York collector, Lillian Malcove, who loaned it in 1957 to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University.
Hale said the provenance was challenged after “the extraordinary chance visit” to the Fogg by the Duchess of Buccleuch in 1957. A memo in Boughton’s archive informed her: “Ours is missing.”
Her husband, the 8th Duke of Buccleuch, wrote to the Fogg, requesting its return “to its rightful home”.
The museum’s director, John Coolidge, replied: “We are all anxious to clear up this distressing affair.”
A notebook of Sir Oliver Millar, the then deputy surveyor of the Royal Collection, reveals that he examined the sketches in 1950. Yet Christie’s told the duke and Coolidge: “The owner says that he bought the picture in January, 1950, at a [market] stall in … Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire … He is unable to get into touch with the stallholder … I am afraid, therefore, that it is impossible to trace the history of the picture farther back.”
Ramsey wrote to Christie’s: “I have not at all clear recollections of what the man looked like.”
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Goldscheider insisted he had given only an “opinion” rather than a “certificate”.
The duchess contacted Kenneth Clark, the former director of the National Gallery, whose 1958 reply noted the changing stories of Ramsey and Goldscheider: “They both make a bad impression.”
Of Goldscheider’s certificate, Clark added: “I cannot think how he can have been such a fool as to write that other letter to say that he had never given a certificate nor believed the picture to be an original. He must have known that he would be found out.”
Clark was also unimpressed by a Christie’s executive: “When he speaks about … Goldscheider changing his mind, he is trying to excuse the most bare-faced falsification.”
The correspondence shows that Ramsey claimed he had never been to Boughton, before admitting: “I was privileged to visit … [in 1951].”
The Fogg returned the portrait to Malcove in 1960. Hale writes: “It must have seemed impossible to prove Ramsey’s involvement, however strong the circumstantial evidence … For the duke’s part … there could be no absolute proof.”
It was eventually bequeathed to the University of Toronto, whose executive committee voted to return it to the Duke of Buccleuch, and it recently went back to Boughton House.
Asked how convinced she is of the two experts’ guilt, Hale told the Guardian: “Absolutely and completely convinced.”
She added: “My research led to it being returned. I negotiated with Toronto, all the way through, right until the end, when we got lawyers involved. So it was my restitution.”
The editor of the British Art Journal, Prof Robin Simon, said the experts were unquestionably “crooks”.
He said: “I shall never know how the owners managed to remain so patient and polite over so many years, not only in trying to deal with the thief – whom they had allowed into their house in good faith – but also faced with the snail-like process of getting their painting back.
The University of Toronto said: “The painting became part of the University of Toronto’s art collection in 1981 as a result of a bequest. At that time, the university had no reason to believe there were any issues with its provenance. After becoming aware of new evidence about the history of the painting, the university immediately initiated discussions to return the work to its owner, a process that was completed in 2022.”
