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Dutch police arrest suspect in Van Gogh painting theft

The original 1884 oil painting, which is worth millions of dollars, has not yet been found

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By dpa

AMSTERDAM — A 58-year-old suspect has been arrested for last year’s thefts of paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Frans Hals in the Netherlands, police said on Tuesday.

Van Gogh’s original 1884 oil on panel work known as “Spring Garden,” or “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen,” was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum outside Amsterdam in the early hours of March 30, 2020.

Police said at the time that the museum’s glass front entrance had been broken into. An alarm was triggered but by the time officials arrived the robbers had already made their escape.

Then, in August, the 1627 painting “Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer” by the Dutch master Hals was stolen from a small museum in Leerdam, about 60 kilometres south of the capital. The doors of that museum were also broken into.

Neither of the stolen paintings, which are each worth millions of dollars, has yet been found, reports said.

According to the police, the suspect was arrested in his apartment in Baarn, not far from the Singer Laren Museum. Police did not disclose further details of the investigation.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1379505468016635908

©2021 dpa GmbH. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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