Sixty hours ago, Van Gogh’s oil The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring was stolen from the Singer Laren museum in the Netherlands. I am certain that it was not what Van Gogh would have wished for his birthday; Monday was the 167th anniversary of his birth.
It also happened to be the birthday of Chris Marinello of Art Recovery International, perhaps the world’s foremost art theft expert. I called him and asked if he thought that the date of the theft was intentional. His response? “I don’t think that they were intelligent enough to know it. I’m not going to give them that much credit.” According to Marinello, others have conjectured that gangs or the underworld were involved, but he is unconvinced. “It was not done by professionals at all; it was not that sophisticated a theft.”
You will note that he uses the plural to describe whoever committed it. On the basis of the evidence thus far, Marinello feels that it may well have been two thieves. One performed the smash and grab, and the other waited outside on a motorcycle, or perhaps a bicycle, since it is The Netherlands, after all. (I cannot wait to see that CCTV footage.) There is, though, the chance that more criminals were involved.
Marinello explains that it was just a matter of timing. The one who smashed the front glass door rushed to the painting, removed it from the wall, and simply left before the police arrived. (More precisely, to quote a poor machine translation of an original Dutch report, the police arrived, “but the birds had already started flying.”) According to Marinello, “They simply took advantage of the pandemic lock down and the fact that officers are not responding as quickly as they normally do. The alarms are ringing and color cameras rolling, but they still can’t get to the museums immediately.” In fact, he confides that he is working on eight cases right now, all of which involve the slow response of law enforcement/government officials. “I’m concerned for all museums right now”, he ominously intones.
So, what happens next?
“Tips will start pouring in, some responsible some loony. Someone will call in and say ‘It was an inside job. I bet the museum director would give his right ear for that painting.’”
In some instances, recovery does end up depending upon a tip, and Marinello actually retrieved a $20 million Beverly Hills art collection on the basis of one some time ago.
Simultaneously, the criminals will try to sell the painting, but Marinello believes that they will have an uphill climb fencing it. “Most people, including dealers, are locked up tight in their homes tight now; the only people out there are the criminals,” he wryly observes. Once they find that they cannot sell it, they will likely await a reward announcement. In Marinello’s experience, museums really do want the paintings back, and do, sometimes, offer rewards.
By contrast, he reveals that dealers frequently take the opposite attitude. They want the cash, not the painting. He cites a case on which he worked in which a stolen Picasso was returned to a Palm Beach dealer, who had not yet been sent the check from the insurance company. “The owner was upset- not at all grateful. The work was over-insured; it was a very nice pay out.” In that particular theft, it turned that both the victim and the criminal were right out of Central Casting. The thief got wind of the fact that President Obama was granting pardons as he left office, so he decided to drive to Washington to ask for one. Two problems- He was going to see Eric Holder, the Attorney General who had already left office, and he stole the car to make the trip. That’s how they caught him.
I can see Chris shaking his head and uttering his favorite refrain, “cavemen”.