Thieves stole the painting Two Laughing Boys by Dutch golden age artist Frans Hals from a museum in the Netherlands, police said. the third time it has been taken.
The artwork, valued at $ 18 million by one expert and dating from 1626, was taken over from the Hofje van Aerden Museum near the city of Utrecht before Thursday morning, with thieves breaking into the building from the back door.
The painting, featuring two laughing boys with a mug of beer, was stolen from the same museum earlier in 2011 and 1988, and was recovered after six months and three years, respectively.
It is the second theft of a painting from a Dutch museum that has been closed to the public due to the coronavirus pandemic, after a Van Gogh artwork was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum in March.
Van Gogh’s 1884 painting, Spring Garden, has not yet been recovered.
‘Hunt is on’
Dutch police said in a statement that officials went to the museum in the city 60 km (40 miles) south of Amsterdam after the alarm went off at 3:30 a.m. (01:30 GMT), but they did not find the suspects.
This photo from November 3, 2011 shows Alblasserwaard district manager Bart Willemsen shows Two Laughing Boys who were stolen from the Leerdam Museum in May that year [File: Ilvy Njiokiktjien/ANP/AFP]
“After the museum administrator was able to grant access to the building, it was revealed that the back door was forced and one painting was stolen: ‘Two Laughing Boys,'” the statement said.
Police said they have begun an “extensive investigation” with forensic investigators and art theft experts. They checked cameras and talked to witnesses and local residents, they added.
Hals, a contemporary of the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, was born in the early 1580s in Antwerp and moved as a child to the Dutch city of Haarlem.
He started working as an art restaurant before becoming a portrait painter in his own right. He is best known for his paintings The Laughing Cavalier, which hangs in the Wallace Collection in London, and The Gypsy Girl, now housed in the Louvre in Paris.
He died in Haarlem in 1666.
Dutch art detective Arthur Brand – named “Indiana Jones of the Art World” after locating a series of sets of works – tweeted that “the hunt is on” for the “very important and precious painting of Frans Hals”.
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