The Scream and Madonna taken in Oslo

At about eleven o’clock on Sunday 22 August 2004, two masked men with guns walked into the Munch Museum in Tøyen, Oslo. The Guardian reports that they threatened staff and visitors and made them lie on the floor. The men took two paintings by Edvard Munch from the wall: The Scream and Madonna. A third man waited with the car. A tourist filmed the robbers as they ran, and the museum says the clip became the main picture material for the press. Police said the thieves dropped the pictures twice, and the frames were later found broken along a street in Oslo.

Both paintings belong to the city of Oslo, according to The Guardian. This Scream is tempera and oil on unprimed cardboard, 83.5 by 66 centimetres. Munch made four versions of the image: two paintings and two drawings. This one was long dated to 1893. In May 2008 the museum director said it was now thought to date from 1910, and the museum gives “1910?”. Madonna is an oil on canvas of 1894. A different version of The Scream, in the National Gallery, was stolen in 1994; another story covers that theft.

On 31 August 2006, two years and nine days after the robbery, Oslo police announced that both paintings were recovered. Police chief Iver Stensrud said no reward had been paid and no new arrests were made. The Guardian puts the reward at about 163,000 pounds. Police have never said in public how they got the paintings back, and the Supreme Court ordered that detail kept secret. The works were damaged. Madonna had a hole of about 2.5 centimetres. The Scream had been struck hard in one corner and has a moisture stain at lower left. After restoration, both went on show again on 23 May 2008. The restorers left the damp spot, because they feared more harm from treating it.

The courts took longer. In May 2006 the Oslo district court convicted Petter Tharaldsen, Bjørn Hoen and Petter Rosenvinge, with sentences of 8, 7 and 4 years, and acquitted three other men. One of them was Stian Skjold. On appeal, in March 2007, a jury convicted Tharaldsen, Hoen and Skjold, and acquitted Rosenvinge. On 11 January 2008 the Supreme Court raised Tharaldsen’s joint sentence to 10 years 6 months and Skjold’s to 6 years. Both are final. The joint sentence for Tharaldsen includes a second robbery, on 30 August 2004. NRK reports that Tharaldsen drove the car, and that Skjold told a court in 2008 that he was one of the two men inside. NRK also reports that a third robber died before he could be charged.

The Supreme Court set aside Hoen’s conviction, because the prosecution had not disclosed a book deal between a former police informant and one of the acquitted men. Retrials followed in 2008, and a new court of appeal convicted Hoen on 29 June 2009 of aiding the robbery, with 2 years 6 months. NRK reports that the prosecutor was considering an appeal. The sources consulted do not give a final status for Hoen after that date.

The motive is disputed. In its 2008 sentencing, the Supreme Court counted it as an aggravating factor that the robbery was done for an organised criminal group, and that one aim was to draw attention from the police inquiry into a March 2004 cash-depot robbery. The 2006 district court had said it was not proven who ordered the robbery or why.

The paintings were shown again in Oslo in 2008. The sources consulted do not say where they hang today.