On the night art detective Arthur Brand finally laid his hands on the long lost painting Buste de Femme, his apartment became the most expensive in Amsterdam. The piece, a favourite of Picasso’s that had hung in the artist’s own home, had gone missing 20 years earlier, pinched from a yacht off the coast of Antibes. For two decades, the canvas had zigzagged across the underworld, bouncing between terrorists, the mafia and the international jet-set — and now it was in Arthur Brand’s home.
“Only a few people in the world have laid eyes on this Picasso”, says Brand. “And for one night, I had it. So what did I do? I hung it on my wall and I sat and looked at it and smoked.”
Picasso, Brand, cigarette. That cosy trio tells you almost everything you need to know about the world’s most successful art detective — the charming, compelling saviour of lost causes. By the time the insurance company came to remove the painting in an armoured car the next day, the empty space on his wall was priceless. “I’ve fallen in love with art,” he tells us, “My one mission is to get stolen art back where it belongs.”
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