A 58-year-old man suspected of stealing a painting by painter Vincent van Gogh and one by master Frans Hals from museums in the Netherlands last year was arrested on Tuesday in Baarn, about 15 kilometers north of Utrecht, Dutch police said.
The works, entitled
The Garden of the Presbytery of Nuenen in the Spring
and
Two Young Laughing Boys
, respectively, have not yet been found, police said in a statement.
The suspect, originally from Baarn, in the center of the Netherlands, was arrested Tuesday morning at his home, added the police, which qualified this arrest as "
important step
" in the investigation.
"For months, intensive investigations into the theft of the two paintings were carried out under the direction of the
public
ministry
," ultimately leading to the arrest of the suspect, she explained.
Read also: Netherlands: a painting by Frans Hals stolen for the third time in the same museum
The garden of the presbytery of Nuenen in the spring
was stolen on March 30, 2020 from the Singer Laren museum collections, located about thirty kilometers from Amsterdam.
Entered by breaking and entering around 3 a.m., the criminals took advantage of the closure of the museum at the time of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic which was then raging in the country.
The painting is estimated to be worth between one and six million euros, according to Arthur Brand, a Dutch art expert.
A Dutch art expert said in June that he had received recent photos of the stolen painting, which he said were
"proof of life"
of the work.
The painting by the master of the golden age of Dutch painting, Frans Hals, was stolen in August 2020 from the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden museum in Leerdam.
The history of this painting is turbulent to say the least, since it had already been stolen twice in this same museum, in 2011 and in 1988, before being found respectively six months and three years later.
Having failed to find the missing paintings of Van Gogh and Frans Hals, the Dutch police have renewed their appeal to the public to request any information on the location of the works.
This is not the first time that Van Gogh's works have been the target of a theft in the Netherlands.
Two masterpieces by the painter were stolen in 2002 from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
View of the Sea of Scheveningen
(1882) and
Exit of the Reformed Church of Nuenen
(1884-1885), whose value amounts to several million euros, were finally found in Italy in 2016. They are again exhibited at the Amsterdam museum since June 2019. In 1990, three paintings by the Dutch painter were stolen from the Noordbrabants museum, before being found and returned.
Frans Hals was a contemporary of Rembrandt and Vermeer, great masters of the Dutch Golden Age, a period marked in the 17th century by the country's heyday in the fields of commerce, art and colonial expansion.
He is known for his numerous portraits, notably
The Laughing Cavalier
, which is in the Wallace Collection in London or
La Bohémienne
, which belongs to the Louvre in Paris.