Recovering Van Gogh How £5m painting wound up in an Ikea bag
The Guardian|September 26, 2023
Arthur Brand stands at the front door to his flat in east Amsterdam, where a week ago he took an extraordinary delivery: a stolen Vincent van Gogh painting worth up to £5.2m.
Senay Boztas
Recovering Van Gogh How £5m painting wound up in an Ikea bag

He didn't sign for it. The delivery man, a criminal uninvolved with the theft, smiled and fled. Then Brand ran upstairs, where a colleague videoed him removing a pillowcase from a blue Ikea bag. Andreas Blühm, the director of the Netherlands' Groninger Museum, who was waiting at a nearby cafe, rushed over to confirm it was the Van Gogh stolen while it was on loan from his museum to the Singer Laren museum three years ago. The recovery of The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring was soon all over the news.

"I have two rules," says Brand, 54, nursing a black Earl Grey and taking a bite of his stroopwafel, "I never break the law because I always work with police, and I never give up informants.

Otherwise they will shoot you dead ... if you tell people they can know where you live, they trust you."

For 15 years, Brand has been an art detective. He remembers the face of every person he meets, and often spends Saturdays "sitting on a bench somewhere in the dark with a criminal who has just been released from prison", and Sundays chatting with police about cases.

His consultancy, Artiaz, helps establish the provenance of pieces.

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