Vincent van Gogh’s painting “The Neunen Parish Garden”, stolen in 2020, was recovered this week by Dutch authorities.
The painting disappeared from the Laren museum near Amsterdam in the Netherlands on March 30, 2020, during the lockdown imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and has now been recovered by Arthur Brand, a detective often called “the Indiana.” Jones of the art world” for already helping police recover several valuable works of art.
“It was one of the best moments of my life” to confirm that Van Gogh’s work had been stolen, says Arthur Brand in statements to AFP.
In April 2021, Dutch police arrested a man suspected of the theft and he was eventually sentenced to eight years in prison, but the painting’s whereabouts were unknown.
Just a few months later, the detective received a tip from a source about a Van Gogh painting being sold on the black market. The man who bought it, Peter Roy K., arrested for drug trafficking, intended to use the painting as collateral to negotiate a possible reduction of his sentence.
Arthur Brand guarantees that no negotiations were made, but the painting ended up in his hands.
Two weeks ago, a man with a hidden identity contacted the detective and told him he intended to deliver the painting to him. “The man told me ‘I want to return the Van Gogh, it caused me a huge headache'” because he couldn’t use it to negotiate a prison sentence.
The painting was delivered to Arthur Brand in an IKEA shopping bag, wrapped in a roll of protective plastic and inside a pillowcase. The authorities confirmed the authenticity of the work and it has already been returned to the museum.
“The Parish Garden of Neunen”, valued between three and six million euros, was painted in 1884, in the early years of Van Gogh’s work.
Source: TSF
