Evening Press technology has been recruited to help York police in the international hunt for the paintings stolen in last week's £1 million City Art Gallery raid.

Richard Green: The more publicity the better

An on-line gallery of the stolen artwork will be posted on our website in the hope of alerting art-lovers around the world to the booty which may have been smuggled overseas.

The robbers who tied up the gallery staff and threatened them at gunpoint, said quite openly they were stealing the pictures to take abroad.

Detectives believe the Evening Press Internet site will prove invaluable in circulating copies and descriptions of the pictures internationally.

York-based local intelligence officer PC Bob Briggs said while there was no firm evidence that the paintings had been taken out of the country, the police were keen to get as much publicity as possible for the stolen works of art, which include a Turner watercolour and an oil painting by Sickert.

"We have not ruled anything out at this stage and are making efforts to ensure the stolen art works are publicised as widely as possible in the hope of returning them to the gallery," said PC Briggs.

"Copies of the pictures are being put on to CD Rom which will be used to put the pictures on the internet via the Evening Press website.

"And we are also having 500 colour posters of the more famous paintings printed up, which we will be sending down to New Scotland Yard. They have the contacts to distribute them through auction houses and exhibition centres throughout the country.

"We are also having some black and white copies done of other paintings."

A full list of the stolen paintings along with some pictures has appeared on the Evening Press website since the paper broke the story on Saturday.

But from next week a more complete catalogue of the stolen works will be available.

York City Art Gallery curator Richard Green said he believed the more publicity the stolen paintings received, the better the chance was that they would come to light.

"I think the more information we can get out into the world and the more widely we can circulate the images then the greater chance we have of recovering them, which is our main hope," he said.

Loss adjuster and valuer James Scott-Brown, of Cunningham, Ellis and Buckle, who is dealing with the York robbery, also welcomed the chance to get the pictures to a wider audience and said he was very impressed by the response of York police.

He said there was a possibility a reward could be offered for information leading to the return of the pictures and said anyone with information should contact his London office on (0171) 292 2300.

Click here to view the list of stolen paintings

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.