New CCTV shows Vincent van Gogh painting stolen in sledgehammer raid at Dutch museum

‘I am shocked and unbelievably p***** off,’ says museum director – as police release footage showing lockdown theft of £5m work

CCTV footage has captured the moment an art thief smashed his way inside a museum to steal a Vincent van Gogh painting while it was shut due to coronavirus lockdown measures.

A Dutch crime programme first aired the security camera footage showing how the man shattered the reinforced glass doors at a small museum just outside of Amsterdam.

The robber could be seen hurrying out through the museum gift shop with Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884) – said to have an estimated value of around £5m – tucked under his right arm.

Police hope that publicising the footage will help them track down whoever stole from the work from the Singer Laren museum on 30 March.

“I am shocked and unbelievably p***** off,” said museum director Jan Rudolph de Lorm. “It is horrible for all of us, because art is there to be seen and shared by all of us, for society as a whole, to bring enjoyment, to bring inspiration, and also to bring comfort.”

The museum’s managing director Evert Van Os stressed in a statement that the CCTV footage didn’t show all of the burglary and defended security.

“The burglar broke through a number of doors and several layers of security that had been approved by security experts,” Mr Van Os said. “The footage released does not therefore allow any conclusions to be drawn as to the quality of security at Singer Laren.”

No suspects have been arrested in connection with the theft of the painting, which was on loan from the Groninger Museum.

Dutch police said on Wednesday that 56 new tips came in from the public as a result of the TV show.

Investigators still want to hear from any potential witnesses who saw the thief arrive outside the museum on a motorcycle. They said that it remains unclear if he acted alone.

Vincent van Gogh's painting, titled 'Spring Garden', was stolen from the Singer Laren museum while it was on loan from the Groninger Museum (Groninger Museum)

The artwork dates to a time when the artist had moved back to his family in a rural area of the Netherlands and painted the life he saw there in mostly sombre tones. The oil-on-paper painting shows a person standing in a garden surrounded by trees with a church tower in the background.

“It looks like they very deliberately targeted this one Van Gogh painting,” police spokeswoman, Maren Wonder, told the Opsporing Verzocht show in the Tuesday night broadcast.

Ms Wonder wants museum visitors to share with police any photos or video they took in the museum in the days before it closed down, to see if anyone was casing the museum before the theft.

“People can help if they now realise that another visitor was behaving suspiciously,” she said.

“It would be very helpful if visitors to the museum have photos or video recordings with other people in them.”