Stolen van Gogh Returned
Some of you may remember an article I wrote back in 2020 about criminals who had taken advantage of the Covid lockdown to steal various painting, one of them being a van Gogh. Well, just a couple weeks ago that painting was recovered! Here’s the story.
Quick Background
Really, I should just be telling you to go back and read my other article but I’ll do a recap here because I know that’s a hassle. So back in March 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic and lockdowns and everything, police were called to a small museum in Laren, Netherlands at 3:15am when an alarm sounded. By the time they arrived they found a shattered glass door and a bare spot on the wall where The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring by van Gogh once hung. The thief, or thieves, were long gone.
The Update
The police quickly started investigating and what I didn’t include in my original article (because it didn’t happen until 2021) was that someone has been charged for this crime. 59-year-old Nils lives a short distance away from the museum and his DNA was found at the crime scene. Pretty open and shut. He was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to eight years in prison.
HOWEVER the painting wasn’t recovered at the time that Nils was caught because he had already sold it or otherwise gotten rid of it. Police had intercepted communications so they knew that the painting was intended to be used as leverage to get shorter jail terms for members of this crime group. It passed from one group to another as no one wanted to touch it, even as a less recognizable van Gogh it’s still a van Gogh.
So the painting itself is floating around from group to group because no one wants to hold it and it’s essentially useless even as a negotiation chip at this point.
Enter a new character, Dutch art detective Arthur Brand (who is sometimes called the Indiana Jones of the art world). In late August 2023 he received a WhatsApp message from an anonymous person asking if he had a confidentiality obligation. He replied that he didn’t but gave his word that he could keep this confidential. The person then texted that they could return The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring and even sent a photo to prove it.
Immediately Brand went to the police who had been investigating the theft and told them about the interaction. He said that he could tell this individual who contacted him had nothing to do with the theft and just wanted to return the painting. How he was so sure of this, I don’t know. After discussing with the police they decided to go along with this return plan.
That following Saturday, Brand was at a party when he received another text, “Arthur, I see you standing outside. I’m here and I want to meet you under the tree” (Paúl, 2023). Brand walked over to where a person was sitting on a bench, in the dark, under a tree. Idk if I would have been so willing to just prance over there in the dark but I digress. The man promised Brand that he would return the painting in two days only if he could be guaranteed to not get in any trouble. Brand told him that he could promise it, and to this day the man has remained anonymous and protected.
Two days later Brand’s doorbell rang, as expected, and the smiling man handed him one of the iconic large blue Ikea bags. Inside, wrapped in a bloody pillowcase (the man said he had cut his hand) was The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring. Brand had the director of the museum that loaned the painting to the museum where it was stolen, Andreas Blühm, on standby at a cafe two blocks away. Once the man left, Brand called Blühm who literally sprinted over, so excited to be able to verify whether this was the real painting or not.
He was able to verify that it is the real van Gogh work and although it has a few scratches it’s stable and they will be able to restore it to its original condition. Blühm says that he will not be loaning the painting out anymore because he is too traumatized as a result of this whole saga. As for the painting itself he had something interesting to say, “the sad thing is that this incident makes this painting all of a sudden more interesting. And this is not fair, because the painting is already interesting as it is, and it doesn’t need that story” (Paúl, 2023).
Works Cited
Kirby, Paul. “Stolen van Gogh Handed to Dutch Art Sleuth in Ikea Bag”. BBC News. 2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66785150
Paúl, María Luisa. “Stolen van Gogh Piece is Returned Inside a Bloody Pillowcase in an Ikea Bag”. The Washington Post. 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/13/van-gogh-stolen-ikea-bag/