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A PAINTING by Vincent van Gogh was stolen on Monday (3/30) morning, from the Singer Lauren Museum in the Netherlands, which is currently closed to the public due to a new corona virus (COVID-19).
The painting Lentetuin or Spring Garden made in 1884 depicts the rectory garden in Nuenen borrowed from the Groninger Museum.
“I feel very angry and now I’m starting to feel even sadder,” Jan Rudolph de Lorm, director of the Singer Laren Museum, told Reuters.
He begged anyone who took the painting to keep it as good as possible “so that sooner or later the painting can be shown to the public in a flawless state.”
Van Gogh, who struggled with mental illness all his life, lived with his parents while painting Spring Garden. At that time his father worked as a priest in Nuenen.
De Lorm described the painting, which features a woman in a garden decorated with bushes with red flowers and a church in the background, as “a portrait of silence, reflection and tranquility, which certainly gives her comfort and inspiration.”
“Through him, the painting gives us and visitors the same emotions,” de Lorm said.
The museum located in the city of Laren asked for the painting to be returned, a case that was listed on Interpol as a stolen art. In his statement, police said the thief entered the museum by breaking the glass door at 3:15 in the morning.
“The thief left when the police responded to the alarm. Investigators are looking for security records and eyewitnesses, also investigating forensic evidence. Museums in the Netherlands have been closed since March 12 due to the corona virus outbreak,” de Lorm concluded. [antaranews]
