An artwork by Dutch impressionist painter, Vincent van Gogh, was stolen from a Dutch museum closed for lockdown in the early hours of Sunday 30 March.
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The Singer Laren museum and concert hall, in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands, had been closed for lockdown on 12 March in line with the Dutch prime minister and former health minister’s measures to close all theatres and museums to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The art thieves are said to have got away with Van Gogh’s 1884 oil painting, Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring. The work is valued in the region of €6 million, or about R118 million.
One of Van Gogh’s earlier works, the stolen painting has naturally caused a lot of stress for museum director, Jan Rudolph de Lorm, who revealed in a YouTube press broadcast that the work was on loan to the Singer Laren from the Groningen Museum in the northern Netherlands. It was on show as part of a collection of Dutch paintings.
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According to the Guardian, De Lorm described the art as ‘a beautiful and moving painting by one of our greatest painters, stolen from the community,’.
Oddly enough, the thieves stole away with the painting on the birthday of the late Van Gogh, who tragically shot himself in 1890. The Dutchman would’ve been 167 years old.
