History repeats itself, worthy of a detective story. A painting by the great master of the golden age of Dutch painting Frans Hals, Two Laughing Young Boys (1626), was stolen at dawn on Wednesday for the third time from the same establishment, the police. It had already been stolen from the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden museum in Leerdam, 60 kilometers south of Amsterdam, in 1988 and 2011. During these first two thefts, it was found six months and three years later respectively. In both cases, the perpetrators were convicted. In 2011, they were four individuals aged 48 to 62, from the Amsterdam region.
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On Wednesday, the museum's alarm went off around 3:30 a.m. and the police observed on the spot that a door at the back of the building had been forced open and the painting had disappeared. The police have launched a "wide-ranging investigation" and called in art theft specialists and scientific experts. Investigators also viewed the images from surveillance cameras and questioned residents. But for now: no sign of the young boys laughing with a bottle of beer in their hand. "The hunt is on" to find this "very important and precious painting by Frans Hals," tweeted the Dutch detective specializing in the theft of works of art Arthur Brand. Nicknamed "the Indiana Jones of the art world," Brand noted that the painting Two Laughing Young Boys was stolen on the anniversary of the painter's death, August 26, 1666. We are dealing with educated thieves, at least passionate? "Wednesday's robbery was similar to previous ones and did not appear to be an elaborate heist , " the private investigator told The New York Times .
Stolen for his notoriety as an escapee?
No other painting by Frans Hals has been stolen, so we can think that it is this painting that is specifically targeted. “It's worth several millions, it's important work , ” says Brand. Its painter is a contemporary of Rembrandt and Vermeer, great masters of the Dutch Golden Age, a period which in the 17th century was marked by the country's heyday in the fields of commerce and art. The artist is known for his numerous portraits, notably Le Cavalier Riant , which is in the Wallace Collection in London or La Bohémienne , which belongs to the Louvre in Paris. But the artistic crime detective speculated that the painting was chosen precisely because it had been stolen before. The thieves would then have supposed "that it must be important" .
Last year, private detective Arthur Brand recovered a gold ring that belonged to playwright Oscar Wilde. She had disappeared twenty years earlier. JOHN THYS / AFP
"I'll search until I find it"
After its second flight in 2011, the museum tightened its security system and moved its most valuable works to an area not open to the public, accessible only with a member of staff. But it was not enough. "Securing small museums is very difficult because it is very expensive ," Arthur Brand told the BBC . If they really want to have your items, they will come in. ”
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On March 30, in full confinement, thieves also stole a work by Vincent Van Gogh, Le Jardin du presbytère de Nuenen in the spring (1884), from another small museum in the Netherlands, which was closed due to anti -coronavirus. There too, the theft took place on Van Gogh's 167th birthday ... And here too, Arthur Brand is on the spot. In June he announced that he had recovered photos of the painting, still on the run. There are many avenues to dig. It may take years and miles before the Two Laughing Young Boys reappear. But the Batavian Indiana Jones seems determined: “The thieves are after me now. I will search until I find it. "
In 2016, two Van Gogh paintings stolen fourteen years earlier in Amsterdam were found near Naples from an Italian mafia, specialized in drug trafficking. In the New York Times , Arthur Brand confessed to having observed for some time a trend in the theft of works of art in the Netherlands: “It is not uncommon for thieves to sell stolen masterpieces to criminals like drug lords. They could in turn use them as a bargaining chip to reduce their sentences. ” The investigation has only just begun.