Dutch art detective traces lost artwork seized from museum near Amsterdam during Covid lockdown
A Dutch art detective has recovered a precious Vincent van Gogh painting that was stolen from a museum in a midnight heist during the coronavirus lockdown three and a half years ago, police have said.
Arthur Brand took possession of the missing painting, The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, painted in 1884 and worth €3m-€6m (£2.6m-£5.2m), at his Amsterdam home on Monday, stuffed in a blue Ikea bag.
Brand, known as the “Indiana Jones of the art world” for tracing a series of high-profile lost artworks, told AFP that confirming the painting was the stolen Van Gogh was “one of the greatest moments of my life”.
“Arthur Brand, in cooperation with the Dutch police, has solved this matter,” Richard Bronswijk, of the Dutch police arts crime unit, confirmed. “This is definitely the real one, there’s no doubt about it.”
Brand told AFP that frequent calls by him and the Dutch police to hand back the stolen artwork finally paid off when a man, whose identity was not revealed for his own safety, handed Brand the painting in a blue Ikea bag, covered with bubblewrap and stuffed in a pillow casing.
