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A 58-year-old man has been arrested in the Netherlands for allegedly sweeping two paintings by Dutch masters Vincent van Gogh and Frans Hals from museums closed by the coronavirus pandemic, officials said.
Police spokeswoman Maren Wonder announced on video on Tuesday that the man had been arrested in Baarn, a municipality about 40 km southeast of Amsterdam, according to Reuters.
No details have been released on the anonymous suspect.
The paintings – “Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring” by Van Gogh and “Two Laughing Boys” by Hals – have not been found and have appealed to the public for help in locating them, Wonder said.
The Van Gogh is valued at $ 6.6 million and Hals’ painting, which dates from 1626, was valued at $ 18 million by an expert, the news agency reported.
“For months, intensive investigations into the theft of the two paintings were carried out under the direction of the prosecution,” said the statement from the Dutch police.
This image provided by the Groninger Museum on Monday, March 30, 2020, shows the painting by Dutch master Vincent van Gogh titled “The Rectory Garden at Nuenen in Spring” which was stolen from the Singer’s Museum in Laren, The Netherlands. (Groninger Museum via AP)
The Van Gogh was stolen on March 30 – what would have been the 19th-century painter’s 167th birthday – from the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam as it was closed due to measures against the coronavirus, the agency reported France-Presse.
“Parsonage Garden” comes from relatively early in the master’s career, before he embarked on his post-impressionist paintings such as “Sunflowers”.
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“Two Laughing Boys” was stolen in a robbery in August at the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden museum in Leerdam, according to AFP.
The painting – which depicts two laughing boys with a mug of beer – had previously been stolen from the same museum in 2011 and 1988. It was recovered after six months and three years, respectively.
Dutch art detective Arthur Brand, nicknamed “the art world’s Indiana Jones” for finding a number of lost paintings, praised the police for his masterpiece necklace.
This photograph taken on November 3, 2011 shows Alblasserwaard District Chief Bart Willemsen showing the salvaged painting “Two Laughing Boys” by Frans Hals which was stolen from the Leerdam Museum in May 2011. (Photo by ILVY NJIOKIKTJIEN / ANP / AFP via Getty Images)
“Another huge success for the Dutch police,” Brand said in a tweet. “The plot thickens …”
Van Gogh’s paintings have been a frequent target of criminals.
Two of his works were exhibited at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam two years ago after being stolen in 2002.
The paintings – the “Sea View in Scheveningen” from 1882 and the “Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen” from 1882 – were found by Italian investigators in 2016 when they attacked a house near Naples belonging to an infamous mafia drug lord, AFP reported.
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Three van Goghs who were stolen from the Noordbrabants museum in 1990 then resurfaced after a Dutch criminal struck a deal with prosecutors.
Hals – a contemporary of Rembrandt and Vermeer during the Dutch Golden Age – is best known for works such as “The Laughing Cavalier”, which hangs in the Wallace Collection in London, and “The Gypsy Girl” at the Louvre in Paris .
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