Images of a stolen Van Gogh give experts hope it can be recovered

In an undated handout image, the stolen work, Van Gogh’s “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” is shown between a copy of The New York Times, which featured an article on the theft, and a copy of a biography of a man who had previously stolen van Goghs. A private art detective investigating the case said he was sent the images of the work, which was taken from a Dutch museum in March. Handout via The New York Times.

AMSTERDAM (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The photographs look like the sort of images that kidnappers distribute with a ransom demand to establish that their victim is alive. A newspaper’s front page is included and used as a time stamp to indicate that the images are recent.

In this case, the subject isn’t a kidnapping victim, but rather a Vincent van Gogh painting that was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum in the Netherlands in March. Arthur Brand, a private Dutch art crimes detective who is investigating the theft, said only that he received them from a “source in my network,” without further elaboration.

He posted them on his Twitter feed and shared them with a Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf. Brand suspects that the images were circulated in criminal circles in an effort to find a potential buyer.

“They are important because it’s a proof of life,” Brand said. “In many cases like this art theft, you see that criminals get nervous and they feel the police are on their backs and they destroy it. Now we know that it hasn’t been destroyed.”

The police investigating the case did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Brand declined to say whether he had been contacted by the police about the photos.

Ursula Weitzel, a leading art crimes prosecutor in the Netherlands, said she had never seen “proof of life” photographs of art works circulated like this. The painting, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” from 1884, was stolen while part of a temporary exhibition at the Singer Laren, on loan from the Groninger Museum.

Security camera footage of the robbery on March 30 shows a man breaking into the museum using a sledgehammer to smash two glass doors and leaving with the painting under his arm.

Andreas Blühm, director of the Groninger Museum, said the photographs of the painting appear authentic, because one shows the back of the work. “You can only have that if you have the painting,” he said in an interview.

He said that he could not comment on whether the museum had been approached with a ransom demand.

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Missing Banksy artwork found in an abandoned farmhouse in Abruzzo, Italy

Stolen Banksy work from door of Paris Bataclan found in Italy 

The work was found in an abandoned farmhouse in Abruzzo, according to l'Aquila prosecutor Michele Renzo, who said further details would be provided on Thursday. by Ella Ide 

ROME (AFP).- Italian police said Wednesday they had retrieved a work by famed street artist Banksy commemorating the victims of the November 2015 Paris terror attacks stolen from the Bataclan concert hall. 

The work was an image of a girl in mourning painted on one of the emergency doors of the Parisian venue, where Islamic State gunmen massacred 90 people. It had been cut out and taken in 2019. 

"We have recovered the door stolen in the Bataclan with a Banksy work portraying a sad young girl," a senior Italian police officer from Teramo, in Italy's central east Abruzzo region, told AFP. 

The raid was conducted with French police, he added. The work was found in an abandoned farmhouse in Abruzzo, according to l'Aquila prosecutor Michele Renzo, who said further details would be provided on Thursday. 

Works by Banksy, known for their distinctive style, irreverent humour and thought-provoking themes, have been found on walls, buildings and bridges from the West Bank to post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. At auction, they have sold for more than $1 million. 

Stealing works: The portion of the Bataclan door is not the only Banksy to have been stolen from Paris. In 2018, the artist "blitzed" the French capital with murals during a whirlwind trip, which he said was to mark the 50th anniversary of the Paris student uprising of 1968. After he appeared to authenticate eight of the Paris works on his Instagram account, it did not take long for thieves to strike. 

Works stolen included a mural of a businessman in a suit offering a dog a bone, having just sawed the animal's leg off. Another was an image of a masked rat wielding a box cutter, which disappeared from outside the Pompidou Centre. 

Banksy took on the rat as his avatar, a symbol of the vilified and downtrodden, in homage to Paris street artist Blek le Rat. Blek started out in 1968 when a general strike by students and workers brought France to a halt. 

Some of the stolen works have since been recovered and fans have covered some of his Paris street art with Plexiglass to protect them. But one mural of a migrant girl was defaced with blue spray paint shortly after news of its discovery spread on social media. 

Banksy is believed to have started out as a graffiti artist in London, although he has kept his identity a secret. The most dramatic of his Paris 2018 creations was a pastiche of Jacques-Louis David's "Napoleon Crossing the Alps", with Bonaparte wrapped in a red niqab. It appeared on a wall in an ethnically mixed district of northern Paris. 

 © Agence France-Presse

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