A Van Gogh Missing in Action — sadie dyson . the art she sees

On March 30th, during the start of the quarantine period, a Van Gogh landscape was stolen. "The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in the Spring,” painted in 1884, was, at the time, at the Groninger Museum in the north of the Netherlands. It was taken during a smash and grab raid from the Singer Laren museum, just outside Amsterdam where it had be on a loan for a specific exhibition. Though the painting was stolen in late March, new evidence was brought in by Arthur Brand, a Dutch private art detective.

Singer Laren, the museum the Van Gogh painting was stolen from

Arthur Brand specializes in art crime and has a stretch of successful recoveries to his name, though he is often noted as being kind of controversial due to his range of art contacts, including ones in the criminal world. But beyond that, he says that he is determined to recover the Van Gogh painting safely and return it to where it rightfully belongs. As of June 26th, he announced that he had found two photographs of the landscape during the time it was stolen. One of them is of the label on the reverse of the painting, to establish its authenticity, and the second includes a piece of newspaper to establish that it is a recent photograph. When asked if he only had these two, he said that he has “more than two,” but cannot publish the rest since it is still a pending investigation and the rest are being analyzed.

In terms of the photographs, Brand deduced that they were probably taken “to shop the painting around” and that those who took it “must be searching for a buyer.” Meanwhile, Andreas Blühm, the director of the Groninger Museum, believes the photographs truly show the stolen painting. As he says: “The label on the reverse appears authentic and I believe it has never been published before - so this means that it is our painting in the photograph. Specifically, the label shows the artist, the title, and a reference to the catalogue raisonné, the annotated listing of the known artworks by an artist, by Baart de la Faille. The other photograph, though slightly blurred possibly done deliberately to hide details, displays the unframed painting on what might be a black bin liner. The photograph has a white streak on the bottom which could possibly be a scratch since the oil painting was done on paper and later mounted on board.

On the sides of the painting, two publications were placed, a book and a newspaper. The newspaper being there to prove dating. Though not much is known about the painting’s whereabouts, it is almost certain that it is still in Europe, so it is slightly surprising that an international edition of the “The New York Times” was used as a parallel since it must’ve been difficult to acquire during the Covid-19 lockdown. But, interestingly, at the bottom of the news article includes a piece by Nina Siegal on the Laren theft itself. The book on the opposite side of the painting is a biography of Octave Durham, one of the main criminals who stole two paintings from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2002, called “Meesterdief” or “Master Thief” by Wilson Boldewijn. The theft discussed in the book is very similar to this one as it was also a smash and grab raid. But unlike this case, the one in 2002 was circulated as currency among the Italian mafia. This brings up the question of if there are any connections to be made between the two or what the thief or thieves plan to do with the painting.

Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in the Spring, 1884, with a copy of the New York Times from May 30th, 2020, and Wilson Boldewijn’s book Meesterdief, a 2018 edition

As of right now, it seems most likely that the photographs were taken for the purpose of circulating the underworld and getting potential buyers who could purchase the painting at a small fraction of its actual open-market value. But there’s another likely chance that the photographs were taken to specifically target the investigating detectives instead. In creating a link between this theft and the Amsterdam thefts, it might have been an attempt to send a misleading message in order to create confusion about whether the Italian mafia is involved or not. Or they could have been taken as criminal bravado to taunt the detectives in some way. Concerning these different speculations, Blühm, on the other hand, refuses to see any truth in them, saying that “we are not going to try to interpret the meaning of the publication of the photographs - that is up to the police.” He does say that he is “relieved that the picture still survives,” as the photographs do encourage its safe condition as well as hope for its successful recovery to the Groninger Museum, its rightful home.