Reward offered for painting stolen 13 years ago
The British Council said today it would try to recover a portrait of British artist Francis Bacon stolen 13 years ago, so that it can be included in a major exhibition next year.
The portrait, painted in 1952 by Lucien Freud, was stolen from the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, in May 1988.
The British Council said it would offer a 300,000 Deutschmarks (stg£100,000) reward for information leading to the recovery of the painting.
A major advertising campaign will be launched in Berlin tomorrow, using posters designed by Freud, in a bid to find the picture.
It is hoped the campaign will lead to the recovery of the portrait in time for next year’s Freud retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain, London.
The exhibition will open a few months before Freud’s 80th birthday.
Freud said: ‘‘Would the person who holds the painting kindly consider allowing me to show it in my exhibition at the Tate next June?’’
Director of Arts at the British Council, Andrea Rose, said: ‘‘This is an extraordinary painting, a portrait of one national icon by another. I would dearly like to see it back where it belongs.’’
Bacon was born in Dublin on October 28, 1909, and died on April 28, 1992, in Madrid, Spain.
He settled permanently in England in 1928 and burst on to the London art scene with an exhibition in 1944 which included his triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion which caused outrage.
