Friday 24th October

Police in Spain are investigating the disappearance of a tiny Picasso painting, worth €600,000 (£520,000), which vanished en route from Madrid to an exhibition in the southern city of Granada.

The gouache and pencil work, Naturaleza muerta con guitarra (Still Life with Guitar), was due to go on show at a new exhibition at the CajaGranada foundation, which opened last week.

But the picture, which was painted in 1919 and measures 12.7cm x 9.8cm, never made it to the foundation’s Still Life: the Eternity of the Inert exhibition.

The painting belongs to a private collector in the Spanish capital and had been expected as part of a consignment of loaned exhibits that arrived by van from Madrid on Friday 3 October.

The foundation said that when the van arrived at 10am that day, its contents were unloaded and checked. Despite the fact that some of the carefully packaged works were not correctly numbered, making “an exhaustive check” impossible, the delivery was signed off and the van and its crew went on their way.

The following Monday, the pieces, which had been under video surveillance all weekend, were unpacked. Once the unpacking had been done, by the CajaGranada foundation’s own staff, the works were moved to different parts of the exhibition room,” the foundation said in a statement. “Mid-morning that day, the exhibition’s curator and the foundation’s head of exhibitions noticed that one work was missing. The piece is a small gouache by Pablo Picasso, called Still Life with Guitar.”

The foundation said it had reported the painting’s disappearance to the Policía Nacional, adding: “We have also put ourselves at the disposal of those investigating, and we have complete faith that the case will be properly resolved.”

Spanish media reports suggested the van may have stopped overnight near Granada, and that the two people aboard may have taken turns guarding its precious cargo.

Picasso’s fame – and the enormous sums his works command – have long made his art a target for thieves around the world.

In February 2007, two Picasso paintings worth a total of €50m were stolen from the Paris home of the artist’s granddaughter. Two years later, a Picasso sketchbook worth more than €8m was stolen from a Paris museum dedicated to the artist.

Twelve Picasso paintings, valued at around £9m, were stolen from the French Riviera villa of another of his grandchildren, Marina Picasso, in 1989.

Several other Picasso paintings have been stolen from galleries. In 1976, 118 works were stolen from a museum in the southern city of Avignon in one of France’s largest art thefts.

In 1997, a gunman walked into a central London art gallery and stole Picasso’s Tête de Femme, worth more than £500,000, before fleeing in a taxi. The work was later recovered.

It seems very strange to steal a small work by such a famous like Picasso unless it has been stolen to order for a private collector where it will never be seen again or, as in a lot of art theft nowdays, it will be used for ransom or as currency in drug deals. This, however,  is such a small piece that the latter sounds unlikely.

There was another “high profile “ heist at the  weekend. This time at The Louvre in Paris where masked thieves entered during public opening hours (9.30am) using a cherry picker and angle grinders to break into a 1st floor window and enter the “Apollo “gallery housing the remaining, French Crown Jewels and steal jewellery “of incalculable value” some belonging to Napoleon’s 111 and Empress Eugenie. The thieves broke into 2 cabinets stealing the contents and afterwards fleeing on a motorbike. The police closed The Louvre whilst the theft is investigated.  One damaged piece, a crown, was recovered later on the getaway route.

It is unbelievable that this type of smash and grab type raid on such a venue as The Louvre in Paris can still happen.

At the weekend, I received another email from Beckstones Gallery, this time saying that a visitor wanted to buy 2 of my large paintings but needed another same size piece (90cmx90cm) to fit the space she had in mind. Beckstones asked when I would be visiting the Lakes next to deliver more paintings and had I got another painting that size. I haven’t but I said I could do one and take it up with my “Lakes of Lakeland“ collection in November or early December.  I’ve ordered the canvas and will get on it ASAP. I seem to be still doing OK with Beckstones despite still feeling like a bit of an imposter?

My canvas for the above arrived on Tuesday and I did the painting on Wednesday. It was a painting of the Langdale Valley and the Langdale Pikes in early Autumn .  I did it in acrylics to match the other 2 paintings and used a palette knife for everything apart from the sky. On Thursday I painted the edges black, also to match the other 2. On Friday I varnished it.

The rest of my time available this week was taken varnishing the remaining Lakes paintings, removing edging tape ( I have left all the edges white canvas in this series) and wrapping the edges with cello wrap to keep them clean. I now have a collection of  11 Lakes paintings all ready to go.

I am hoping to get a few paintings for OCG done to take up at the same time and make the trip worthwhile.  I’m still waiting for canvases for this but time is getting short and I’m also starting to get panicky about my Christmas cards.