Image copyrightArthur Brand
Subtitle,
Detective Arthur Brand said he and police agreed not to release the name of the man who returned the painting for his own safety.
Item Information
- Author: Paul Kirby
- Role, BBC News
1 hour
A Van Gogh painting stolen from a Dutch museum in March 2020 is safe again after a three-and-a-half year search.
Dutch art detective Arthur Brand said a man showed up at his door and gave him the 139-year-old painting in a pillow and an Ikea bag.
“I did this in full coordination with the Dutch police and We knew this guy wasn’t involved in the robbery.” said.
In 2021, a career criminal was sentenced to eight years in prison for this incident.
But by then the painting, which cost several million euros, had already changed hands.
Picture “The parish garden in Nuenen in spring” (The Parish Garden in Nuenen in Spring) was stolen from the Dutch village of Laren, southeast of Amsterdam
The thief used a hammer to break two glass doors at the Singer Museum at the start of the coronavirus lockdown.
The work had been on loan from a museum in the northeastern city of Groningen, which called its restoration “wonderful news.”
French-born thief Nils M., 59, who lived near Laren, was convicted of stealing the work and, a few months later, a painting by Frans Hals from a museum in Leerdam, near Utrecht. His DNA was found at both crime scenes.
According to communications intercepted by police, it is Van Gogh’s 1884 painting, also known as “Spring Garden.” It had been acquired by a criminal group who wanted to use it in exchange for shorter prison sentences.
Image copyrightGRONGINGER MUSEUM/Portal
Subtitle,
Vincent Van Gogh painted the painting in May 1884 while living with his parents in Nuenen.
Brand, who worked with Dutch police to find the work, told the BBC that they knew it would be passed from one criminal group to another because no one wanted to touch it.
In June 2020, Brand received photos of Van Gogh as “proof of life.”
Finally a man from Amsterdam contacted him and He offered to return it in exchange for complete confidentiality.partly because it had become cumbersome to continue storing the painting.
“I was at a birthday party and he was waiting for me under a tree and explained to me why he wanted to do this,” Brand told the BBC.
The painting was delivered to his home on Monday afternoon, while the director of the Groningen Museum waited around the corner in a bar to authenticate the work.
The work was protected by a cushion covered in bloodHe added, as the man had cut his finger during the rescue.
A spokesman for the Dutch police’s art crime department has confirmed that the recovered painting is authentic, and Andreas Blühm, director of the Groninger Museum, said he was pleased with the return.
“There are scratches… but it’s painted on paper and glued to cardboard so it’s sturdy. We can restore it and it will be fine,” he told BBC’s Newshour.
The “Spring Garden” is currently in the hands of the Van Gogh Museum, whose experts will help with the restoration, and it could be weeks or months before it goes back on display.
The director said he wouldn’t lend him any more money because he was too traumatized.
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