Jim Broadbent: 'The Duke' is based on the true story of when the Nation bought a Goya portrait of the
Duke of Wellington and it was nicked by a man from Newcastle.
Roger Michell: This is the only time in its history that anyone has stolen anything from the National Gallery.
[music]
Letizia Treves: So I saw the film last week Jim Broadbent: Did you?
Letizia: I did. I really enjoyed it and it must have been so much fun playing him?
Jim: It was, it was a happy film to make. Very exciting to be in the National Gallery.
Letizia: Well, behind the scenes is quite fun Jim: It's a thrill
Letizia: So we have lots of Conservation studios. We've got three different ones.
This is two and then we're in the main one. Jim: Ah - thrilling.
Jim: Oh gracious Letizia: So here we are in our main Conservation studio
Jim: Oh wow! How extraordinary. Wonderful, gosh yeah.
Jim: It is different to see it in reality Letizia: The actual thing!
Jim: because while we were rehearsing and filming it wasn't available to actually
see the painting. There's a lot more, I don't know, vulnerability and
almost fear in his eyes than you see in the reproduction.
Letizia: It's very interesting because
Goya paints this as Wellington enters Madrid victorious. You know, he's
wearing all the medals and the badges and the honors but he's really harrowed.
You can see the sort of gaunt cheeks. He shows the sort of human side, the kind of
psychological side of war.
Jim: I'd sort of assumed from the just the postcard size almost
that it was, you know, a portrait that he had just brushed on and quickly done as a sort of...
dashed off as a commission but actually there's a lot more to it.
Letizia: There is, I think he almost certainly sat for him in the light when he entered Madrid and Goya
was sort of the chief portraitist at the time so he was obviously the man to go to
but he didn't have much time. He was only in Madrid briefly and then when he came back through
Madrid two years later, Goya changed quite a lot of the medals. He'd won more medals, more honours
so he had to actually change quite a lot in this area, moving buttons and sashes,
And the picture obviously has a starring role in your forthcoming film, 'The Duke'.
Jim: I think my character, Kempton, when he first sees it, says "It's not very good is it?"
I think he's wrong! Letizia: I was going to ask you about that actually!
Kempton Bunton: "It's not very good, is it?"
Letizia: Doesn't he describe it...at one point, he says "it's a half-baked portrait by a half-drunk artist" or something?
Letizia: He fancies himself as an art historian Jim: He doesn't really appreciate...He fancies himself as a writer
Letizia: But also you bring with it...he's very affable. I mean, you end up...
even though I work at the Gallery you end up, sort of, rooting for Bunton.
Jim: Yeah, I mean, all that's in the writing really and it's so beautifully
written. I follow the clues that Richard [Bean] and Clive [Coleman] present.
Letizia: And so he allegedly comes into the National Gallery and removes the painting from an easel.
It had just been bought and it was on exhibition. The public were queueing to come and see it.
Jim: So it was popular? I mean, it did attract people? Letizia: Hugely. I mean it was in the papers a
lot because it was a major acquisition and you know within, what, three weeks of it having been
acquired it disappeared! So I mean it was absolutely astonishing.
Jim: It must have been extraordinary.
Letizia: So at the press conference and in the papers as well they quoted the then Director, Sir Philip Hendy
said "How do you feel when you've lost a Goya? You feel a bloody fool and that's the
truth!". You know, it must have been mortifying. This major acquisition that then disappears.
Dorothy Bunton: "I'm shaking" Kempton Bunton: "It's the shock"
Dorothy: "Shock? Yes I'm shocked. There's a stolen masterpiece in my wardrobe!"
Kempton: "I'm taking it back!"
Letizia: I think what was really interesting in the scenes where you handle the picture,
you know, often you come and see pictures in museums, in their frames, on the wall
you forget they're just painted on a little thin piece of panel or on a thin piece of canvas and
there's a wonderful scene in the film where you're looking at the picture
from the front with your son and all you see is the back of the panel, and this picture is painted
on the panel, and you're reminded how it's just a really physical object. You know, without its
frame, it's actually quite a small thing. I thought that was very well...sort of, brought to life.
Jim: And from the Art Department point of view it was created well as a prop?
It was recreated well? Letizia: Very well because also
Goya has a very, kind of, fluid brush work
so actually it's a very hard thing to replicate because, particularly with this picture, it feels
very free and painted at speed because it was, you know, and every brush stroke you feel that
he's changing things as he goes along and so that's quite a hard thing to replicate with
someone doing it very carefully with this purpose in mind. So we're going to go to the
Archives now and you're going to be shown some of the archival material that we have relating
to the theft of the picture, the label on the back of the picture and so on with our Archivist.
[Music]
Jim: So you've collated all this have you? In this display? Nicolas Smith: That's right. I kind of
cherry-picked some more interesting items which illustrate the story of the Goya theft.
As you'd expect the first theft of a painting in the 137-year history of the Gallery
was met with great consonation and generated notable paperwork so this is kind of the tip of
the iceberg. Jim: Right, of course.
Nicolas: That's a photograph of the first of the communicational letters.
As you know the Buntons sent them by intervals between 1960 and 65. This first one
arrived about 10 days after the theft Jim: "Query not that I have the Goya"
This is the one featured in the film .
Kempton Bunton: "Query not that I have the Goya.
The act is an attempt to pick the pockets of those who love art more than charity."
Jackie Bunton: "A better Robin Hood! Like that?"
Jim: "None of the group concerned in this escapade have any criminal convictions."
"All good people are urged to give and help in this affair to a speedy conclusion." It must be a very
very weird letter to get. I mean, they wouldn't have known where to...
how to handle it would they? i mean it's not like a regular ransom note?
Nicolas: No, there's a lack of, kind of, any specific details or clues there really and
there had been all sorts of crank letters and phone calls in the immediate aftermath of the
theft so how do you distinguish one from the other? He moves between 'I' and 'we' I think.
It's kind of unclear whether it was a single individual or a gang.
Journalist: "Could it be out of the country already Commissioner? Commissioner: Well, looking
at the degree of planning and expertise involved we're convinced that the Goya has been stolen to
order by a well-funded highly professional international criminal gang."
Nicolas: It says it's not damaged, apart from a couple of scratches
at the side, which would have been reassuring. Jim: Yes. I mean you tend to
forget, when you're making the film and when I was making the film and trying to inhabit
Kempton Bunton's character, the pain and the huge anxiety and shame.
Nicolas: That's right Jim: And agony that
these other people were going through because of it. It's not a crime with no victims in that way.
Nicolas: That's right and I think John Bunton was very sympathetic to the agony that had been caused
to other actors in the story as a result of his actions. Yes the theft quickly entered the popular
cultural imagination and gets a nod in James Bond's 'Dr No'.
Jim: Yes, we included that in the film.
Nicolas: When the Goya portrait was exhibited at the trial it was
packed up in a special box but in this photograph it looks like it's been rather kind of bunged on
the backseat of a taxi cab!
Jim: I suppose his other legacy is that the security is much tighter now
Nicolas: Yes, that's true!
[Music]
Jim: And this has just been on loan? Letizia: It has which is why you weren't able to see it
during the run up to the film Jim: Where has it been on loan?
Leitizia: It went to Japan. We had a group of major pictures from the National Gallery, 60 pictures going
to Japan and then to Australia and it's only literally just come back.
Jim: Welcome home!
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