A Van Gogh painting stolen from a Dutch museum was handed to an art detective in an Ikea bag after being missing for years
Reuters
- A detective said he negotiated the return of a Van Gogh painting that was stolen in 2020.
- Arthur Brand said he was delivered the painting in a blue Ikea bag at his home.
- The painting had circulated in the criminal world for years, Dutch police said, per the BBC.
A Dutch art detective says he was delivered a missing Van Gogh artwork tucked in a blue Ikea bag at his home in Amsterdam.
Arthur Brand, dubbed the "Indiana Jones of the art world" by local media, made the announcement in a video posted on his Instagram account on Tuesday.
"So here it is! The Spring Garden by Vincent van Gogh, which was stolen three and a half years ago on Van Gogh's birthday from a museum in the Netherlands," he said.
The painting, which has the full title "The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring," was stolen during a break-in at the Singer Laren museum in the Dutch town of Laren on March 30, 2020.
The museum was displaying the artwork as part of a temporary exhibition and had borrowed it from the Groninger Museum, per a statement on its Facebook account. The museum was closed at the time due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The thief smashed through two glass doors to get into the museum, according to the BBC.
Over the past few years the painting circulated in the criminal world, according to communications intercepted by the police, the BBC reported.
In comments to The Guardian, Brand said that the police were able to arrest everybody involved: the thief, intermediaries and the buyer. "Everybody was in jail, but the painting was still not there," he said.
That is, until Brand received a call from an unidentified individual who told him they could return the Van Gogh.
After some negotiations, he persuaded the man, whom Brand said had "nothing to do with the theft," to hand it to him, The Guardian reported.
Brand did not reveal the identity of the man. It remains unclear how he got the painting.
In his Instagram post, Brand said he recovered the iconic painting in "close coordination" with Dutch police and would hand it over to the director of the Groninger Museum "in a couple of minutes".
In a Facebook post, the museum's director, Andreas Blühm, thanked Brand for his role in the search.
Brand has helped recover more than 200 works of art over the past 20 years, per CNN.
He helped recover Salvador Dalí's "Adolescence" in 2016, Tamara de Lempicka's "La Musicienne" in 2016, as well as a ring once gifted to a friend by Oscar Wilde.
According to The New York Times, Brand has published books, hosted a television program about locating stolen art, and has often urged people to come forward to return stolen artworks.