ABOVE: Detail from Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure (1969-70), which was stolen by thieves last Thursday.

Thieves broke onto the grounds of Perry Green, home of influential sculptor Henry Moore, and stole one of the artist’s huge bronze sculptures, the BBC (and many others) report. Reclining Figure, more than two tonnes of hollow bronze, doesn’t, at first blush, seem like something you could just sneak off with, but that’s exactly what has happened. A truck with a crane showed up in the wee hours of Thursday morning, hoisted the hunk of bronze onto its flatbed, and took off. The truck itself had been stolen earlier, and was later found abandoned, sans sculpture.

The big worry is that these thieves had one of two motives: either it’s a fine art theft and they already have a buyer willing to hide the thing (unlikely), or they took it for scrap metal and intend to melt it down. The £3 million sculpture, police say, would yield about £5,000 worth of scrap bronze if it were melted down. Obviously this is a terrible loss for the Moore Foundation and for British art generally, but it’s hard not to marvel a little at the sheer gall of the theft.

LINK: BBC > Reward offer for stolen sculpture