A 58-year-old man has been arrested in the Netherlands for allegedly swiping two paintings by Dutch masters Vincent van Gogh and Frans Hals from museums shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic, officials said.
The paintings — Van Gogh’s “Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring” and Hals’ “Two Laughing Boys” — have not been recovered and appealed to the public for help in locating them, Wonder said.
The Van Gogh is valued at up to $6.6 million and the Hals painting, which dates from 1626, has been valued at $18 million by one expert, the news agency reported.
The Van Gogh was stolen March 30 — on what would have been the 19th-century painter’s 167th birthday — from the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam while it was closed due to coronavirus measures, Agence France-Presse reported.
“Two Laughing Boys” was stolen during an August burglary at the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden museum in Leerdam, according to AFP.
The painting — which features two laughing boys with a mug of beer — was previously stolen from the same museum in 2011 and 1988.
The paintings — the 1882 ” View of the Sea at Scheveningen” and the 1884/5 “Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen” — were recovered by Italian investigators in 2016 when they raided a home near Naples belonging to an infamous Mafia drug baron, AFP reported
UK
Australia
France
Germany
Russia
India
Canada