‘Indiana Jones’ of art world finds stolen Van Gogh painting worth £5,000,000
A Vincent Van Gogh painting has been recovered three years after it was found by the ‘Indiana Jones of the art world’.
Dutch art sleuth Arthur Brand managed to track down and acquire The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring worth up to £5 million.
The 1884 painting was snatched in an overnight raid in March 2020 from The Singer Laren museum east of Amsterdam.
It was there on loan from the Groninger Museum.
‘The Groninger Museum is extremely happy and relieved that the work is back,’ director Andreas Bluhm said.
‘We are very grateful to everyone who contributed to this good outcome.
‘The painting has suffered, but is – at first glance – still in good condition.’
It was dumped in a blue IKEA bag, wrapped in bubble wrap and a pillow case.
Brand, who earned his ‘Indiana Jones of the Art World’ nickname after he traced a series of lost works, said finding confirming the painting was the stolen Van Gogh piece was ‘one of the greatest moments of his life’.
‘This is Spring Garden by Vincent Van Gogh which was stolen three years ago on Van Gogh’s birthday from a museum in the Netherlands.
‘We have searched for it for more than three and a half years but finally it’s here, it’s back.’
The identity of the man who contacted Brand saying he wanted to give the painting back was not revealed for his own safety.
‘The man told me, “I want to retun the Vn Gogh. it has caused a massive headache” because it could not be used as a bargaining chip,’ Brand said.
He managed to persuade the man, who ‘had nothing todo with the theft’, to hand back the painting.
The work will be scientifically examined in coming months.
It is being kept temporarily at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
However, an insurance company had paid the Groninger Museum for the loss and is now the formal owner, although the museum says it will exercise its right to first purchase of the work.
It said it hopes to have The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring back on display soon, although this ‘could take weeks, if not months’.
The 25cm by 57cm (10in by 22in) 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 van Gogh had moved back to his family in a rural area of the Netherlands and painted the life he saw there, including with his famous work The Potato Eaters, in mostly sombre tones.
Later, he moved to southern France, where he developed a far more colourful, vibrant style of painting as his health declined before his death in 1890.
On the rare occasions when Van Gogh’s paintings come up for sale, they fetch millions at auction.
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