THE WOMAN WHO STOLE VERMEER

A rollicking biography of a female art thief.

In his lively third book about art and crime, Amore, the director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, tells the story of a “fiery, bold, and brash” Englishwoman who stole for nationalistic reasons. Bridget Rose Dugdale (b. 1941) is a “true outlier and major figure in the annals of criminal history.” Born into a wealthy family, she studied philosophy, politics, and economics at several colleges. A position at the Ministry of Overseas Development was “crucial” to her becoming an activist, as was her reading of Marx’s Das Kapital, with its discussion of British imperialism in Ireland. Dugdale was invigorated by seeing Cuba’s revolution in person, attending protests in Manchester, and visiting Northern Ireland. The Bloody Sunday protests were “responsible for her foray into Irish politics,” as she transitioned from “intellectual activist to militant operative.” Englishman Walter Heaton, a married “revolutionary socialist,” became her comrade in arms and, later, her lover. Dugdale’s aggressive activism earned her the nickname “Angel of Tottenham.” In 1973, she broke into one of her family’s estates and stole eight valuable paintings to fence for the Irish Republican Army, a crime for which she received a suspended sentence. With two “local toughs,” she hijacked a helicopter in a botched aerial bombing of a British police station in Northern Ireland. As Amore writes, Dugdale had “elevated her status from gunrunner and rabble-rouser to bona fide terrorist.” In 1974, Vermeer’s painting The Guitar Player was stolen from England’s Kenwood House. Amore believes Dugdale was the thief, but it was never proven. Then came the “biggest theft in the world,” as Amore extravagantly describes it: Dugdale and her IRA cronies brazenly stole 19 paintings from Ireland’s Russborough House, including Vermeer’s Woman Writing a Letter With Her Maid. She only stood trial for the bombing and was sentenced to nine years. Released in 1980, Dugdale has become “something of an icon in Ireland.”

A captivating, detail-rich biography of a “criminal legend.”