A retired editor who tool up drawing as a hobby in his seventies has fallen victim to art thieves for a second time.

John Marquis’s line drawing – called simply BULL – has been stolen from a leading Cornish restaurant, the second time in under three years that one of his pictures has been snatched in broad daylight.

John, 80, a former editor of Packet Newspapers in Cornwall, and the Bahamas’ leading daily, The Tribune, began painting and drawing after a major health scare in 2013.

As reported by HTFP in 2021,  he previously  fell victim to thieves in 2021 when his picture, One-Line Sausage Dog, was thought to have been mistaken for a Picasso.

Said John: “It’s annoying, but also quite flattering.  Anyone who risks being caught must really want the picture. If it turns up in a top Paris gallery, I’ll be quite chuffed.’

“As a kid, I was told I had talent. It was suggested that I should be a commercial artist, but I wanted to be a journalist. After my illness, I decided to give it a go. My work has sold mainly at street markets and Cornish art festivals.”

He said it “doesn’t get much better” than having his work mistaken for a Picasso, but added: “It would be nice to get the pictures back.”

“BULL was drawn with just ten lines,’ said John. ‘I think old Pablo might have approved.”

John worked as a journalist for fifty years, starting out at the Northampton Chronicle and Echo in 1961 and going on to work for the Nottingham Evening Post, Nassau Guardian and the Thomson Organisation, working across several titles as London sports editor and chief boxing writer.

In his forties, he moved to Cornwall to edit the Packet group, then became managing editor of The Tribune for the last decade of his career.