Case · Theft
The Ashmolean Cézanne Theft
Stolen under cover of millennium fireworks
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Image: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
As Oxford celebrated the new millennium, a thief slipped into the Ashmolean through a rooftop and took Cézanne's 'View of Auvers-sur-Oise'. It has never been found.
The intruder used the noise and smoke of New Year's Eve fireworks as cover, entering through a skylight, dropping a smoke canister to obscure cameras, and leaving with the single small landscape.
The precision suggested a targeted, possibly commissioned theft. Two decades on, the Cézanne remains missing.