A Dutch art detective dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the Art World” has recovered another six paintings, including a portrait of William of Orange and the first depiction of a seventh-century king.
Art sleuth Arthur Brand made headlines around the world last month when he recovered a stolen Vincent van Gogh stuffed in an Ikea bag, and he believes that widely publicized success is leading to more discoveries.
Thieves made off with the latest six paintings from the town hall of Medemblik, in the north of the country, last month.
Photo courtesy of Arthur Brand, AFP
While the monetary value of the haul is not huge — about 100,000 euros (US$105,000) — the paintings are considered of great historical significance, including the earliest known portrait of Radbod, king of the Frisians from 680.
Brand was sitting at home on Friday night watching football when the doorbell rang and a man in a van asked him for help to unload some merchandise.
“I asked him: ‘What are we going to unload?’ He said with a smile: ‘Well, the paintings of Medemblik,’” Brand recounted.
After the initial burglary last month, Brand had been widely quoted in the Dutch press as saying the thieves should have stolen six bikes, as these would be easier to resell.
Those comments, plus the publicity surrounding the Van Gogh recovery, probably led the thieves to simply hand the paintings back, Brand said.
“In some cases, they burn them, just to get rid of the evidence, because they find out they cannot sell them,” he said.
“So I’m very thankful that they decided to do the right thing. Stealing is wrong, but if you return it, at least you do something right,” he added.
Now Brand is hoping that the momentum from the Van Gogh would lead to another prize recovery — a masterpiece by Frans Hals called Two Laughing Boys.
He also has his eye on recovering work from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where paintings worth an estimated US$500 million from the likes of Johannes Vermeer, Edouard Manet and Rembrandt were stolen in 1990.
The authorities in Medemblik had offered a reward of 10,000 euros for the safe return of the paintings, but this has gone unclaimed.
Brand said he would not be collecting the cash himself.
“I told them to give me a good book voucher,” he quipped.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS