Van Gogh Painting Stolen From Museum on the Artist's Birthday
- March 30, 2020 10:28
A Dutch museum closed during the coronvirus pandemic was hit by thieves who took a painting by Vincent van Gogh.
The Singer Laren museum, near Amsterdam, announced that van Gogh's 1884 "The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring," which was on loan, is now missing after the overnight raid. An alarm was triggered, but the culprits escaped before police arrived.
"I am shocked and unbelievably pissed off," museum director Jan Rudolph de Lorm said during a press conference Monday afternoon.
The work was on loan from the Groninger Museum, also in the Netherlands, and it was that museum's sole work by van Gogh. The heist took place on the eve of the artist's 167th birthday (March 30).
Europe has recently been hit with another high-profile art heist from the University of Oxford art gallery and Christ Church Picture Gallery in the UK. On March 15, thieves took A Soldier On Horseback (c. 1616) by Anthony Van Dyck, A Boy Drinking (c. 1580) by Annibale Carracci, and A Rocky Coast, With Soldiers Studying a Plan (late 1640s) by Salvator Rosa.
