Stolen Van Gogh Artwork Is Handed Back Inside An IKEA Bag
Photo 100861451 © Deanpictures | Dreamstime.com
Art sleuths had been frantically searching for an early Vincent van Gogh painting that was taken from the Singer Laren Museum back in 2020. Three years on, the work has been found—stored in a blue IKEA bag, no less.
Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, painted in 1884, was loaned to the Netherlands museum by the Groninger Museum for a temporary exhibition. However, the show’s run was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then, on March 30, 2020—incidentally the artist’s 167th birthday—security footage caught a masked person breaking into the site with a sledgehammer and making off with the painting.
In the years that followed, the artwork remained lost to the public. That was until Monday, when a tipster returned the prized piece in bubble wrap and handed it off to Dutch private art detective Arthur Brand in his home.
Vincent van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884). Photograph: Marten de Leeuw. Image via Groninger Museum
Brand, famously regarded as “the Indiana Jones of the art world,” had been working with the Dutch police to locate the painting. The work eventually ended up in his hands when the tipster personally reached out to him.
The suspected masterminds of the robbery were already caught and convicted, so Brand doesn’t believe they were involved in the painting’s return. The artwork had made its rounds in the underworld, but it was no longer valuable to criminals due to the fines they knew they had to pay if it was discovered to be in their possession.
Per the Art Newspaper, the people who stole the painting had intended to use it to barter for someone’s release from prison.
The painting was created a couple of years before Van Gogh found his calling in France. The gloomy piece depicts a person in a garden, with a church in the distance.
The newly retrieved work has incurred a little damage, including some scratches on its canvas, but nothing that’s irreparable. It’s now being restored at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
“The Groninger Museum is extremely happy and relieved that the work is back. It is currently in good company in the Van Gogh Museum. We are very grateful to our colleagues in Amsterdam for their hospitality,” expresses Andreas Blühm, director of the Groninger Museum, in a statement. “On behalf of all our staff, all Groningen residents and visitors, we are very grateful to everyone who contributed to this good outcome. Arthur Brand played a key role in this case and the museum greatly appreciates that.”
Brand says he plans to celebrate this victory with the Dutch police officers he’s been working with to crack the case.
View this post on Instagram
Upon its repair, the painting is set to come home to the Groninger Museum, its rightful holder. The museum reassures art lovers that it will “show the work to the public again in its right place.”
[via New York Times and Art News, images via various sources]
