The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Art Heist
October, 1997
McCrone Research Institute received three samples from the Boston Herald purported to be flakes of paint from an alleged Rembrandt painting. The institute was asked to determine whether these flakes were fraudulent or indeed from the Rembrandt paintings stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990.
The late Dr. Walter C. McCrone and McCrone Research Institute are featured in the Netflix documentary series “This Is a Robbery.” They appear here on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight program from June 14, 2021.
Stereomicroscopy, Polarized Light Microscopy, and SEM/EDS
The flakes were examined with low magnification stereomicroscopy to decide whether they came from different color areas and smaller portions of each were then removed with a sharpened tungsten needle and dispersed into individual pigment particles mounted for analysis by polarized light microscopy (PLM). In addition, individual pigment particles representative of each pigment type were also studied by scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS) for chemical analysis and confirmation.
Pigment Identification
It was determined that all three samples are very similar in pigment composition and particle size with only varying percentages of burnt sienna, lead white, and whiting (chalk). McCrone could not help but notice that the natural chalk component is mixed with a particular type of lead white characteristic of the Dutch product in the 17th century in that mostly fine particles are accompanied by larger aggregate particles. This had been previously discovered by our laboratory in the ground layer of Rembrandt’s paintings.
Conclusion:
“I feel that it is very likely these chips came from a Rembrandt painting.” — Walter C. McCrone in his report to the Boston Herald, 13 October 1997, in response to the question whether the flakes received were indeed from an alleged Rembrandt painting or fraudulent.
Positive Identification
Officials investigating the single largest theft of priceless artwork were encouraged by the analysis of Walter McCrone and the McCrone Research Institute as they and museum officials called it “ the most significant piece [of evidence] that we’ve gotten so far.”
Or not?
However, in December 1997, the museum conducted its own analysis and through a press release announced that they had determined that the paint chips “did not come from Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee or Rembrandt’s Lady and Gentleman in Black which were stolen from the Gardner Museum in March 1990.” Newspapers quickly picked up the story reporting that the paint chips “aren’t from Rembrandts.”
McCrone's Response
“What they didn’t say was that the chips [submitted to McCrone in October, 1997] were from the Vermeer [or Flinck, both were Rembrandt contemporaries and] also from Holland.”— Walter C. McCrone
Note: The best known works of art were taken from the museum’s Dutch Room and included two (2) Rembrandts, a Vermeer, and a Flinck; all Dutch productions from artists in the 17th century. If not from either of the two stolen Rembrandts, it is entirely possible that the paint chips are from the stolen Vermeer The Concert, or the stolen Flinck Landscape with an Obelisk. Johannes Vermeer was a Rembrandt contemporary, and Govaert Flinck is acknowledged as one of Rembrandt’s best pupils. All three artists are from Holland and all of their stolen paintings are 17th century Dutch products. In fact, according to the museum’s website, the stolen Flinck landscape was long thought to be a Rembrandt until it was recognized, in the 1980s, as the work of his pupil, Govaert Flinck.