Theft of paintings from a County Wicklow home

The Theft of paintings from a County Wicklow home was an art robbery that turned valuable works into leverage in the campaign surrounding the Price sisters’ imprisonment and hunger strike. A ransom letter connected the theft to a demand that the hunger strikers be returned to Ireland to serve their sentences there, and the stolen collection was eventually recovered.

Background and Demand

The robbery took place during the same period as another art theft made in the Price sisters’ name: a painting stolen in London had been returned after Dolours Price made a special plea for it. The County Wicklow theft extended that pressure campaign on a much larger scale. The book describes the robbery as perpetrated in the sisters’ name, rather than establishing that either sister carried it out.

A ransom letter demanded that the hunger strikers be returned at once to serve their sentences in Ireland. The demand made the paintings instruments of political pressure: their recovery was linked not to an ordinary investigation alone, but to the prisoners’ fate and location.

The Stolen Collection

The collection, taken from a house in County Wicklow, was described as worth millions of pounds. Among the missing works were paintings by Velázquez, Vermeer, Rubens, Goya, and Metsu. The scale and prominence of the collection gave the theft a different weight from the earlier single-painting robbery, even as both were associated with the Price sisters’ cause.

Recovery and Significance

The paintings were later recovered. The account does not specify how they were found or whether the ransom demand was met. Their recovery closes the practical arc of the theft, but not its political significance: the episode shows how cultural property could be drawn into a campaign over imprisonment, with a ransom letter making the connection explicit.