Man jailed for punching hole through $10 million Monet painting

PanARMENIAN.Net - Andrew Shannon, the man who punched a hole through a Claude Monet painting worth $10 million in June 2012, has been sentenced to five years in prison.

As Artnet's News reports citing Metro, the attack took place at the National Gallery of Ireland, in Dublin, where Shannon attacked a Monet painting, entitled Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat (1874), and then shouted at the group of shocked gallery visitors who had witnessed the scene. The security guard who restrained Shannon shortly after found a can of paint stripper on the vandal.

In an attempt to diminish his responsibility, Shannon claimed at the Dublin Crown Court that he “felt faint" and fell into the painting. Yet, evidence suggests otherwise. The incident was recorded on the museum's CCTV cameras, which show Shannon deliberately punching the artwork. After seeing the footage, the jury needed only 90 minutes of deliberation before finding him guilty.

Moreover, according to the Express, when police raided Shannon's house in Dublin last April, they found 48 stolen items worth more than €100,000, including valuable artworks, books, and antiques. They were identified as having been stolen from Dublin, Belfast, and Yorkshire, some of them back in the 1980s and 1990s.

“Shannon was a big threat to society," a source at the Dublin Crown Court told the Irish Mirror. “He has a corrupt perversion of the mind, [he is] a complete sociopath."

The convicted criminal will not be allowed in any gallery for 15 months after his release.

Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat is now back on display in the Dublin institution, after having been restored.