A painting by Dutch master Vincent van Gogh was stolen in an overnight smash-and-grab raid on a museum that was closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, police and the museum said on Monday.
The Singer Laren museum east of Amsterdam said that The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884 by Van Gogh was taken in the early hours of Monday.
By early afternoon, all that could be seen from the outside of the museum was a large white panel covering a smashed door in the building’s glass facade.
Photo: AP
Museum general director Evert van Os said the institution that houses the collection of US couple William and Anna Singer is “angry, shocked, sad” at the theft.
The value of the work, which was on loan from the Groninger Museum in the northern Dutch city of Groningen, was not immediately known. Van Gogh’s paintings, when they rarely come up for sale, fetch millions at auction.
Police are investigating the theft.
“I’m shocked and unbelievably annoyed that this has happened,” Singer Laren museum director Jan Rudolph de Lorm said.
“This beautiful and moving painting by one of our greatest artists stolen — removed from the community,” he added. “It is very bad for the Groninger Museum, it is very bad for the Singer, but it is terrible for us all because art exists to be seen and shared by us, the community, to enjoy to draw inspiration from and to draw comfort from, especially in these difficult times.”
The 25cm by 57cm oil on paper painting shows a person standing in a garden surrounded by trees with a church tower in the background.
It dates to a time when the artist had moved back to his family in a rural area of the Netherlands and painted the life he saw there, including his famous work The Potato Eaters, in mostly somber tones.
Later, he moved to southern France, where he developed a far more colorful, vibrant style of painting as his health declined before his death in 1890.
Police said in a statement that the thief or thieves smashed a glass door to get into the museum. That set off an alarm that sent officers rushing to the museum, but by the time they got there the painting and whoever stole it were gone.
A team including forensics and art theft experts was studying video footage and questioning neighbors.
Van Os said the museum’s security worked “according to protocol,” but he added: “Obviously we can learn from this.”
The Dutch government on March 12 banned large crowds among its measures to halt the spread of the virus, leading several museums to close temporarily.
Before the closure, the museum was hosting an exhibition titled “Mirror of the Soul,” with works by artists ranging from Jan Toorop to Piet Mondrian, in cooperation with Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.
The Singer Laren’s collection has a focus on modernism, such as neo-impressionism, pointillism, expressionism and cubism.
It is not the first high-profile theft from the museum. In 2007, thieves stole seven works from its sculpture garden, including a bronze cast of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin.
The famous sculpture was recovered a few days later, missing a leg.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS