We all know about the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Musée du Louvre, but there was in fact another painting that was snatched right off the wall. On June 11, 1939 Antoine Watteau’s painting L’Indifferent was quickly cut from its wires and left in the middle of the day from the full room dedicated to Dr. Louis La Caze collection. To make matters worse, they didn’t notice for a few days. Director of the Louvre, Henri Verne was let go the next day, unable to survive the embarrassment of the painting leaving in the middle of the day. The guard later said that a strange amount of people asked him questions about another painting on the other side of the room diverting his attention.
The painting by Watteau was rather small compared to his other paintings. Just 8x10 inches and painted on wood. It depicts a young man in light blue with a red cloak and his arms outstretched. In his hand was a diabolo toy, we will get to why that is now gone. Painted in 1716, it arrived at the Louvre in 1869 and hung there for 80 years.
On August 14 the media was alerted that something “sensational” was going to happen at the courthouse. When the tall lean Serge Claude Bougosslavsky walked in and declared that it was he that stole the painting they all gasped. Serge basking in the limelight went on to tell them that he went to the Louvre everyday for 15 days before he stole it. Each day lifting the painting and twisting the wire from which it hung.
On June 11, he cut the wire, put it under his coat and walked right out the door. The reason why he took it? Well that was because he felt it needed to be restored from errors that occurred in earlier restorations. In a small rental apartment on the Rue Saint Honoré where he “restored” the painting by washing it to bring out the colors and removing the diabolo which he felt wasn’t in the style of Watteau.
Why did he decide to return it? He felt the national police had enough to deal with the onset of WWII. Thirteen days later Watteau’s “retouched” L’Indifferent and the art of the Louvre was packed up and moved to the Loire valley before the Germans arrived in Paris.