Slashdot: Dutch Museum Says Van Gogh Painting Stolen In Overnight Raid

Dutch Museum Says Van Gogh Painting Stolen In Overnight Raid
Published on March 31, 2020 at 07:40AM
The Singer Laren museum in Laren, east of Amsterdam, says thieves have made off with a prize Vincent van Gogh painting while the institution was closed to the public. artnet News reports: The break-in at the museum happened in the early hours of Monday morning, at around 3:15 a.m. The thieves smashed a large glass door at the front of the museum to access the building. Police reached the scene after the museum's alarm was triggered, but the perpetrators had vanished by the time they arrived, according to a statement from the local authorities. To add insult to injury, [the Dutch master's The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884) painting] does not even belong to the museum -- it was on loan from the Groninger Museum in Groningen, the Netherlands, according to the police. The 1884 work was the only painting by Van Gogh in the Groninger Museum's collection. It was painted when Van Gogh was living in Neunen, where his father was a pastor, between 1883 and 1885, and depicts the ruins of the village church, which the artist could see from his father's house. (The date of the theft also happens to be the artist's birthday: he was born on March 30, 1853.)

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