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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Early Van Gogh painting stolen from Dutch museum

Vincent van Gogh’s "The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring" (1884). The painting was stolen overnight on Monday, March 30, 2020, from a small museum in Laren in the Netherlands, just 20 miles southeast of Amsterdam, on what would have been the artist’s 167th birthday. Groninger Museum via The New York Times.

BERLIN (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- A Vincent van Gogh painting was stolen early Monday from a small museum in Laren in the Netherlands, just 20 miles southeast of Amsterdam, on what would have been the artist’s 167th birthday.

“I feel enormous anger and sadness,” Jan Rudolph de Lorm, the museum’s director, said. “Because especially in these dark days that we are in, I feel so strongly that art is here to comfort us, to inspire us and to heal us.”

Police were called to the Singer Laren museum at 3:15 a.m. Monday, when an alarm went off. By the time they got there, the thief or thieves were already gone, said a spokeswoman for the Dutch police.

All police found was a shattered glass door and a bare spot on the wall where the painting was displayed. Hours later, authorities announced that the work, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” was taken.

The heist comes as museums in much of Europe and the United States are closed in attempts to stem the spread of the coronavirus. It also comes eight years after a spectacular breach at a museum in Rotterdam, where thieves made off with seven paintings valued at more than 100 million euros (about $110 million) by forcing an emergency exit, exposing the relatively weak security systems at some art museums.

Coronavirus or not, guards are not usually posted at the museum overnight. The alarm system is linked straight to the local police.

“They knew what they were doing, going straight for the famous master,” de Lorm said. Police agreed that it would have taken minutes from the time of forced entry to leaving the premises.

The painting was on loan from the Gröninger Museum for a special exhibition, “Mirror of the Soul,” which was to run from January to May. “It’s an early picture, before Arles and before Paris, so it is darker and less recognizable as a van Gogh,” said Andreas Blühm, director of the Gröninger.

Because of the coronavirus outbreak, museums in the Netherlands closed March 13, and the Singer Laren had announced it would be closed until at least June 1.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

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