In January, we wrote about four paintings stolen from the Museu Chácara do Céu in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil during Carnival. Two of those paintings, a Dali and a Matisse, had been stolen before. This month’s “Still Missing” story is about a Frans Hals painting, “Twee Lachende Jongens,” also known as “Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer” that has been stolen not twice, but three times, from a small museum, the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden, in Leerdam, Netherlands.
A Little History About Where the Theft Happened
The Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden (“Hofje van Aerden”) is a museum, and former hofje, dating back to the early 1770s in Leerdam, Netherlands. A hofje, which is a Dutch word meaning “small garden,” is a Dutch courtyard with small almshouses around it, providing housing for poor older people, mostly women. These structures have existed in the Netherlands since the Middle Ages. The Hofje van Aerden was built between 1770 and 1772 on the former location of the Kasteel van Leerdam, a castle destroyed by the Spanish in 1574. The hofje itself was founded by Maria Ponderus, who was born in 1672.
At the age of 20, Maria married Pieter van Aerden, a 50 year old widower, who was a notary and attorney. She lived to the age of 92, surviving her husband and children, and left her fortune for a hofje for poor Protestant women in Leerdam. Under the terms of her will, her husband’s collection of 17th century paintings, including paintings by Frans Hals and Jacob van Ruisdael, was to be hung in the Regentenkamer or Regent’s Room of the complex, where the collection is still seen today. According to the website for the Hofje van Aerden, the museum is run entirely by volunteers.
How the Theft Happened
Early in the morning of Wednesday, August 26, 2020, alarms went off at the Hofje van Aerden. When police officers arrived at the Leerdam Museum at approximately 3:30 a.m., they found that someone had broken into the museum by forcing open the back door and had stolen the Frans Hals painting, “Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer.” Video surveillance footage showed two men driving away on a scooter, with one of the men holding what appeared to be a small painting. The police also found an orange tension strap tied to a flag outside of the museum. At the time, the museum was closed to visitors completely due to a COVID-19 lockdown.
In 1988, the Hals painting had been stolen from the museum, along with a painting by Jacob van Ruisdael, “Forest View with Flowering Elderberry.” The paintings were recovered in 1991. Those same two paintings were stolen again in 2011. In that theft, the thieves triggered an alarm but managed to flee before the arrival of the police. The police did find the frame of one of the paintings dumped in a nearby hedge. The two paintings were recovered by law enforcement on October 28, 2011, several months after that second theft. Four men were convicted of that theft.
After the second theft in 2011, the museum increased security of its collection and kept its most valuable works of art, including the Frans Hals painting, in a separate area that was only open to visitors under supervision.
Interestingly, a painting by Vincent van Gogh, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” painted in 1884, had been stolen several months before the most recent theft of the Frans Hals painting.
The van Gogh painting had been taken, at approximately 3:15 a.m. on March 30, 2020, from the Singer Laren Museum in Laren, Netherlands, just 48 kilometers from Leerdam. The van Gogh painting, on loan from the Groninger Museum in Groningen, Netherlands, had been part of a temporary exhibition at the Singer Laren Museum, which had closed to visitors just weeks earlier due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Security cameras at that museum captured the theft. The surveillance video showed a man using a sledgehammer to break into the museum by smashing two glass doors, hurrying through the gift shop, breaking another glass door, and then leaving the building with the sledgehammer in one hand and the framed painting tucked under his arm. The thief then left the frame in a parking lot.
In April 2021, Nils M., whose full name is protected under Dutch privacy law, was arrested in Baarn, Netherlands, just 48 kilometers from Leerdam and 11 kilometers from Laren. The investigation of the thefts included DNA analysis of the orange tension strap left behind from the Hofje van Aerden theft and of the frame of the van Gogh painting left behind from the Singer Laren theft.
According to Ditch law enforcement, the DNA of Nils M., whose criminal record included a conviction for art theft from a museum in Gouda, Netherlands, in 2015, was found on both objects. He was convicted of the thefts of the Frans Hals and van Gogh paintings on September 24, 2020, and was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. He has always denied having taken part in the 2020 art thefts. At that time of his sentencing, neither painting had been recovered.
To date, no information has been uncovered about the location of the Frans Hal painting. The stolen van Gogh painting was recovered, however, in September 2023. In cooperation with the Dutch police, private detective Arthur Brand received the painting, wrapped in a pillowcase and in an Ikea bag, from an unnamed contact. According to Brand, his contact had not been involved in its theft from the Singer Laren Museum.
How to Identify This Missing Piece of History
The missing oil on canvas, painted circa 1627, is 22.2 inches high by 27 inches wide. The painting depicts two smiling boys, one of whom is wearing a fur hat and holding a beer mug. Hals signed the painting in the middle right with the monogram “FH.” At the time of the theft, the painting had a value of approximately $15 million Euros.
Why This Missing Piece of History is Important
Frans Hals, known as Frans Hals the Elder, was born in the early 1580s in Antwerp, then in the Spanish Netherlands. In the mid 1580s, during the Fall of Antwerp, he fled with his parents to Haarlem in the new Dutch Republic. He lived in Haarlem until his death in 1666.
Hals was a painter in the 17th century Dutch Golden Age and was highly sought after for most of his career for individual, family and group portraits. He was in such demand that he could insist that his subjects come to him in Haarlem to sit for their portraits.
Hals had the ability to capture the distinctive personalities of his subjects through his use of poses and facial expressions, and his visible brushstroke technique. Theodorus Schrevelius, a Dutch Golden Age writer and poet, described Hals’ portraits as having “such power and life” that Hals “seems to challenge nature with his brush.”
Hals was an important influence on much later Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters. Indeed, Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo:
“What a joy it is to see a Frans Hals, how different it is from the paintings – so many of them – where everything is carefully smoothed out in the same manner.”
What to Do if You Know Where This Missing Piece of History Is
If you recognize Frans Hals’ painting “Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer,” have any information about it, or know its whereabouts, please call us at 1-202-240-2355 or send us an email at contact@arguscpc.com.