$50 Million Van Gogh Stolen, Again

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Aug 22nd 2010 at 8:01PM

Not too many paintings get stolen twice from the same museum. A painting of a vase of flowers by Vincent van Gogh was stolen for the second time recently from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo, Egypt. The AP reports that the painting was also stolen in 1978 and was recovered two years later in Kuwait. The painting is worth a lot more now, an estimated $50 million. The painting known as both "Poppy Flowers" and "Vase and Flowers," was cut from the frame. Egypt's top prosecutor, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud has said that none of the alarms and only a handful of surveillance cameras were working when the painting was stolen. On Sunday, Egypt's culture minister, Farouk Hosni, announced that the painting had been recovered but later it was reported that the painting is still among the missing.

The small one-foot-by-one-foot painting is similar to a flower scene painted by the French artist Adolphe Monticelli and the Monticelli painting also is part of the Khalil collection. It is believed the van Gogh was painted in 1887, during the phase of rapid productivity that marked the years before his suicide in 1890.

Tags: art theft, cairo, egypt, mahmoud khalil museum, poppy flowers, van gogh, vase and flowers, vincent van gogh

Filed under: Art, Crimes and Misdemeanors

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Spectacular Bid Aug 23rd 2010 2:32PM

Actually twice Sir Alfred and Lady Beit's Wicklow mansion ("Russborough House") was robbed of Vermeer's "Lady Writing a Letter With Her Maid".

First time it was stolen was in1974 by Rose Dugdale and in 1986 by Martin Cahill, the criminal known as the General. The work which was recovered in 1993 had been donated while it was still missing to the National Gallery of Ireland by the Beit family.

kun Aug 25th 2010 11:42PM

the scream..twice, mona lisa..twice.. I could come up with more paintings if I did a proper research but when it comes to art; it seems that paintings that were stolen before are more liekly to get pinched again.. probably due to high demand