A window cleaner accused of stealing paintings from the studio of the renowned abstract painter Alan Davie has been jailed for four years. Daniel Pressland, 42, from Billericay, Essex removed works valued at over half a million pounds after the artist died in 2014 age 93.
“You were like a vulture on a carcass and just helping yourself. You acted disgracefully.”
Pressland was hired to wash windows at the late Scottish artist’s Hertford home. He is thought to have burgled the artist’s property a number of times in the months after he passed away, removing a total of 31 paintings. When caught red handed loading his van with three canvases he told the police he was using the paintings, valued at £90,000, as ramps to get his motocross bike into his van. Only nine of the stolen canvases have been recovered.
Passing sentence at St Albans Crown Court yesterday (April 5), Judge John Plumstead described him as a “vulture”. He said: “You happened on an opportunity to get rich quick by stealing from someone who you had been worked for years. “You were like a vulture on a carcas and just helping yourself. You acted disgracefully.”
The judge added, “Pressland had committed the burglaries not realising the art gallery that acted on behalf of Mr Davie had a complete record of everything he had painted or drawn in his lifetime and would know what was missing”.
Alan Davie was the first British painter and one of the first of any European artists – to realise the vitality and significance of American Abstract Expressionism. Throughout his life he obsessively drew and painted, producing paintings of startling originality, vitality and daring. Combining imagery derived from different world cultures with a love of music and language, Alan Davie’s paintings are a complex yet joyous celebration of creativity that combine the expressive freedom of abstraction with a wealth of signs, symbols and words.