Book review: 'The Woman Who Stole Vermeer'

 

Rose Dugdale is 80 years old this year and practically an icon in Ireland where she romped and fought the British for years.

Always proud of her participation in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (which often denied links to her criminal acts), she sought to aid revolutionaries who worked to transfer IRA prisoners.

Adopting a new identify to contrast with that of her wealthy background, she used her largesse like a modern-day Robin Hood to benefit those in need, including criminals who were not adverse to violence when they deemed it necessary to achieve their goals, and she joined right in.

Johannes Vermeer, Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, 1670-1671, is one of the paintings Rose Dugdale helped steal. It is featured on the cover of The Woman Who Stole Vermeer by Anthony M. Amore/Wikimedia


Her metamorphosis is the thrust of the book, The Woman Who Stole Vermeer: The True* Story of Rose Dugdale and the Russborough House Art Heist by Anthony M. Amore, an interesting biography, especially for art enthusiasts, crime  readers, and scholars of feminist history.

Her attitudes were shaped by the 1960s antiwar movement raging in the U.S., a trip to Cuba, and the growing feminist revolution. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford University.

Despite her revulsion of and public derision in courtrooms of the wealth and lifestyles of her parents, they never abandoned their daughter, always trying to maintain a relationship, any relationship. Ms. Dugdale took advantage of them, stealing from her own family.

For years she was able to elude police who considered her dangerous and often tried to track her.

She helped drop "bombs" of milk churns on a police station in 1974, the first helicopter bombing attack ever recorded on a police precinct in Ireland. (The bombs failed to detonate.)

In courtrooms, Ms. Dugdale frequently became angry over receiving a lighter sentence than her chums, a reflection, perhaps, of her status.

Her many successful criminal ventures embarrassed the government until she was captured after leaving her driver's license in a stolen getaway car.

She's the only woman to have conducted a major art heist, targeting the Russborough House, reportedly the "longest house" and "one of the finest great houses in Ireland" with one of the finest national private art collections. She knew the place well, better than her comrades who could not identify the priceless works of art, but Ms. Dugdale could. 

The robbers gagged and kidnapped one of the owners who thought he was the target of a homicide. (He wasn't).

Confined for nine years, in prison she gave birth to her only child and, later, after the boy's father, Eddie Gallagher was captured (and sentenced to a longer term), they were married inside the walls, the first recorded marriage of convicts while in prison in Ireland.

For those who follow crime and are continually perplexed by the still missing paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (1990), this is a good read. The author, coincidentally, is director of security for the Gardner.

The National Gallery of Art's retired curator Arthur Wheelock, a Vermeer expert, is quoted several times in the book which lacks an index.

* The publisher's web copy of the cover lacks the word "true" while the copy I have includes it.

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Irish ruins

In Ireland/Patricia Leslie

Scattered throughout Ireland are many remnants like these which date from the 12^th and 13^th centuries following the Norman invasion of Ireland around 1168.

In Ireland/Patricia Leslie

The ruins are common along country roads where one cannot drive more than a few miles without spotting ancient castles and towers, many which stand close to roadways.

In Ireland/Patricia Leslie

Like huge grave markers spread over vast cemeteries, the gray buildings pay tribute to past occupants and, like cemeteries, they are generally ignored by residents who lack the esteem Americans hold for them, structures this old, non-existent in the U.S. In Ireland most of the remains are unprotected and shrouded by years of nature's growth.

In Ireland/Patricia Leslie

A search of several websites reveals their anonymity.

In Ireland/Patricia Leslie

Noted Irish history scholar Richard Roche writes in his The Norman Invasion of Ireland:

What eventually occurred in Ireland in the late 12th and early 13th century was a change from acquiring lordship over men to colonising land. The Cambro-Norman invasion resulted in the founding of walled borough towns, numerous castles and churches, the importing of tenants and the increase in agriculture and commerce, among many permanent changes brought by the Norman invasion and occupation of Ireland.

In Ireland/Patricia Leslie

The church was busy, too:  Between 1172 and 1348, hundreds of new parishes were constructed.

In Ireland/Patricia Leslie

In Ireland/Patricia Leslie

In Ireland/Patricia Leslie

Wikipedia describes several famous structures and places:

Rock of Cashel: Legend associates the Rock of Cashel with St. Patrick, but the name comes from Caiseal, meaning "stone fort." Excavations have revealed some evidence of burials and church buildings from the 9th or 10th century, but it was in the early 12th century that the Rock began to be developed into a major Christian center.

The Rock of Cashel/Patricia Leslie

In 1101, Muirchertach O Briain, king of Munster, gave the Rock of Cashel to the church, and shortly thereafter, a round tower, which still stands, was erected. In 1111 Cashel became the seat of an archbishop. The present cathedral was erected in the 13th century.

In 1647, during the Irish Confederate Wars, Cashel was sacked by English Parliamentarian troops under Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin.  His men looted or destroyed many important religious artifacts, and massacred Irish Confederates and the Roman Catholic clergy.

The oldest and tallest of the buildings is the round tower which dates from c.1100

Other accounts at Wikipedia describe local mythology: The Rock of Cashel originated in the Devil's Bit, a mountain 20 miles north of Cashel when St. Patrick banished Satan from a cave, resulting in the Rock's landing in Cashel which is said to be the site in the fifth century of the conversion of the King of Munster by St. Patrick.

In Ireland/Patricia Leslie

The Rock of Cashel was the traditional seat of the kings of Munster for several hundred years before the Norman invasion, and claims to have one of Europe's finest collections of Celtic art and medieval architecture. Little remains of early structures. 

The Monastery of Skellig Michael was a Christian monastery founded on an island in the Atlantic Ocean between the sixth and eighth centuries and continuously occupied until its abandonment in the late 12^th century.  It's located about seven miles from the Ring of Kerry, and its remains and most of the island were included on the 1996 UNESCO World Heritage List.

Skellig Michael/Patricia Leslie

In Scotland/Patricia Leslie

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