FBI Accused of Deception in Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist Investigation: Discrepancies Emerge in Stolen Art Count and Alleged Rembrandt Portrait
Part 5: A Rembrandt Landscape
In the days after the theft Anne Hawley, the Director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was distraught. She thought that the theft would mean the museum would close and all the pieces would be sold with the resulting money going to Harvard University because of the terms of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s will. She and everyone else working for the museum would be out of a job. She also thought that because the FBI had closed the museum with no ticket fees she would not even be able to meet payroll. She was very distrustful of the FBI and it had even crossed her mind that someone with the FBI had been taking the large Rembrandt Self-portrait out the door on the 19th when it was found (by my mother) on the floor of the Spanish Room.
On March 19, 1990 shortly before the press conference Director Hawley and the FBI decided to say that The Landscape with an obelisk by Rembrandt was attributed to another Dutch painter in order to lessen the blow to the trustees of the museum. It would lower the total value of the theft. They also wanted to make the robbers seem incompetent and make it less likely for any potential buyer to trust them. They hoped that it would keep the paintings in the area.
[The authenticity of Rembrandt paintings is a constant conflict. As early as 1931, Dr. Wilhelm R. Valentiner, one of the foremost Rembrandt authorities, authenticated only one of the Gardner’s four Rembrandts. I believe it was Christ in the storm on the sea of Galilee although the New York Times only put up a brief list with the count of one in the museum’s line.
In 1985 the Landscape with an obelisk was included in Gary Shwartz’s book definitive Rembrandt: His Life His Painting published by Viking as were the other Rembrandts in the collection.
The Rembrandt Project, a group of experts who authenticated Rembrandts, had downgraded paintings at the Gardner and other museums but has lost some credibility over the past decades. Paintings that they dismissed as being created by others in his studio have been proven to be by Rembrandt through x-rays and other novel imaging techniques. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum had still attributed all four paintings to Rembrandt on the day of the theft.]
To keep this subterfuge going in later years the FBI and the museum asked other experts to promote the fiction that the Landscape with an obelisk was not by Rembrandt including Cynthia P. Schneider Ph.D, former Assistant Curator of European Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts who was rewarded with a posting as Ambassador to the Netherlands (1998–2001). The paper that she supposably published detailing this, does not exist. Neither does the false Boston Globe article which covers its publication. Only a headline appears if you attempt to search for it.
