Art
Van Gogh Painting Stolen From A Small Dutch Museum Presumably By Professionals
“These guys were professionals.”
On Van Gogh’s 167th birthday, one of his paintings that was lent to Singer Laren’s museum was announced to have been stolen. The painting was ‘The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring’ that was drawn in 1884.
Singer Laren is a museum that houses the collection of a couple of American artists William Singer and Anna Singer. The museum has been temporarily closed due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
On Monday, director Jan Rudolph de Lorm said in the museum’s news conference, “I am extremely outraged that this happened. We and the Singer Institution are shocked and sad.”
It was a Van Gogh’s lent by Groninger Museum in the northern Netherlands two months ago. While the director of Groninger, Andreas Blühm, has refused to reveal the real value of the painting, he pointed out that this was one of Gogh’s earliest works.
“People often tend not to recognize the earlier paintings from this Dutch period, before he moved to Paris. It has a certain documentary and emotional value. It’s quite intimate.”
Previously, three of Gogh’s 1884 works, “The Sitting Farmer’s Wife,” “The Digging Farmer’s Wife” and “Wheels of the Water Mill in Gennep”, were also stolen in 1990 from Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch. In 2002, two others were stolen and they all either ended up in a drug lord or mobster possession as a bargaining token when they were cornered.
Both directors of museums argued that the Covid-19 situation had any in effect as it was done when the morning was dawning with security protocols in place. They added, “These guys were professionals. They did it in four or five minutes. They knew exactly what they were looking for — they went straight to this painting. It rang a bell.”
