Art tends to skyrocket in value after the artist passes away - or so the cliche goes. It was perhaps with this in mind that a thief walked into the Bowral and District Hospital five days after Margaret Olley's death and took one of her pictures from a wall.
The crime was meticulously planned. The thief walked into the waiting room at the children's ward with a cheap replacement print swathed in white fabric. With the new print disguising the theft, it took hospital staff five days to miss Olley's work.
It might have been the perfect get-rich-quick scheme - but for one crucial detail. While Olley's paintings and signed prints sell for thousands of dollars, the hospital's unsigned reproduction of the oil painting Parrot Tulip is worth next to nothing. Identical prints are on sale at the Mittagong Visitor Information Centre for $50.
Olley painted it to raise money for the McGrath Foundation during the annual Southern Highlands Tulip Time Festival. It sold at auction for $50,000 to the broadcaster Alan Jones, who donated it back to the charity.
Organisations that helped with the fund-raising received unsigned reproductions of Olley's work. One of the 100 prints went to Berrima District Credit Union's charity foundation for children. The credit union spent $400 on framing and donated it to the hospital. The vice president of the credit union foundation, Ross Stone, said the theft was disappointing, though - given the work's value - hardly alarming. ''I don't know what they think they'll do with it,'' Mr Stone said.
The police have identified a suspect. Moss Vale policeman Senior Constable Martyn Rigby said it was ''reasonable'' to speculate the thief hoped to cash in on Olley's death.
''It's a brazen act,'' he said.
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