The recovery by Brand was organised in conjunction with the Art Crime Unit of the Dutch police. Nearby in Brand’s apartment was the large blue Ikea bag in which it had been handed over, along with the pillow which had been inside in a clumsy attempt to protect the fragile painting. He picked up the painting, turned it over to look at the reverse, saying, with great relief, “Yes, that’s it”.īlühm had worked at the Van Gogh Museum in 1993-2005, so he knows the artist’s work well, and the telltale exhibition labels on the reverse were there. “I was super excited”, Blühm later told The Art Newspaper. The museum director arrived a few minutes later. Although he had put aside a pair of gloves, to inspect the painting without adding his own fingerprints, in the heat of the moment these were forgotten and he simply held it up. By this time Brand had made a quick inspection of the painting, being fairly sure it was the real thing. The museum director was instructed to wait in a café which was two blocks from the art detective’s apartment.īlühm did not have much of an appetite that day, so it hardly mattered that he had not quite finished lunch when the call came through. It was on 7 September this year that Brand, a highly successful art recover specialist who had long been on the trail, told Blühm to come to Amsterdam four days later. There was also a false start early last year when another contact (not Brand) had suggested that a recovery was imminent, but it never materialised. Having to deal with an art theft is every museum director’s worst nightmare, so it has been a difficult time for Blühm. The Hals, Two Laughing Boys (around 1626), had been stolen from the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden museum in Leerdam on 26 August 2020, five months after the Van Gogh.
In April 2021, Dutch police had arested Nils M., who was later sentenced to eight years imprisonment for stealing the Van Gogh and also a Frans Hals painting. Thief at the Singer Laren museum, captured on a security camera, 30 March 2020 Credit: Singer Laren
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