Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer | |
---|---|
Artist | Frans Hals |
Year | c. 1626 |
Catalogue | Seymour Slive, Catalog 1974: #60 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 68 cm× 56.5 cm(27 in× 22.2 in) |
Location | Missing (stolen from) Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden, Leerdam |
Accession | Br.L.4 |
Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer is an oil-on-canvas painting by Frans Hals, created c. 1626, showing a Kannekijker (mug-looker). It should hang in the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden museum at Leerdam in the Netherlands, but it was stolen from there in 2020 and is still missing.
In old Dutch a Kannekijker, someone looking into a mug, refers to a glutton, somebody greedy for more. This theme of seeing is also present in the painting, as one of the five senses, and various experts have argued about whether this portrait was meant as one in a series, along with Two Boys singing for hearing, and a variant version of The Smoker for smell:[ citation needed ]
Hals has included an accomplice peering over the central figure's shoulder, and besides the other two paintings already mentioned, this theme of a main subject with a secondary witness was common to many of his paintings of the 1620s; for example:
The theme of looking into a mug was also used by Hals when he painted the portrait of Peeckelhaeringh who turns to the viewer to show his mug.
The painting belongs to the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden museum. [1] It has been stolen from the museum three times: in 1988, 2011, and 2020. [1] One theory of why it is stolen so often is because the various theft attempts have defined its market value, making it easier to sell as stolen property. [2]
In 1988, the facility manager was forced to turn off an alarm under threat of being shot. In 1991, it was returned after a ransom was paid, together with another painting called “Forest View with Flowering Elderberry”, by Jacob Salomonsz van Ruysdael, which had been stolen at the same time. [2]
On 28 October 2011, it was recovered after being stolen for a second time on 27 April 2011. [3]
The most recent theft was in late August 2020. [4] [5] In early April 2021, a person was arrested in the town of Baarn as a suspect. The person was also suspected of stealing a work by Vincent van Gogh called The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, which was stolen from the Singer Laren museum in Laren in March 2020. Neither painting was recovered at that time. Art detective Arthur Brand told a reporter that the person in custody probably did not know the location of the works because "stolen artwork was often moved around quickly by criminal gangs".
A BBC News item stated the value of the Frans Hals painting to be "some €15m (£13m; $17.5m)" but provided no source for that information. [5] An article in The Guardian the same day said the work "would be expected to fetch £13.4m at auction". [6] [7] On 24 September, the man was convicted of the thefts and sentenced to eight years imprisonment. [8]
Leerdam is a city and former municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of Utrecht. The municipality was merged with the municipalities of Vianen and Zederik on 1 January 2019. The name of the new municipality is Vijfheerenlanden which is a part of the province Utrecht. The former municipality Leerdam was a part of the province South Holland.
The Van Gogh Museum is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opened on 2 June 1973, and its buildings were designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Kisho Kurokawa.
The Frans Hals Museum is a museum in the North Holland city of Haarlem, the Netherlands, founded in 1862, known as the Art Museum of Haarlem. Its collection is based on the city's own rich collection, built up from the 16th century onwards. The museum owns hundreds of paintings, including more than a dozen by Frans Hals, to whom the museum owes its name. The Frans Hals Museum has two historic locations in Haarlem city centre: the main location on Groot Heiligland and Location Hal on Grote Markt, composed of the adjacent 17th-century Vleeshal and 19th-century Verweyhal. On Groot Heiligland is the 17th-century Oudemannenhuis with regent's rooms. It houses the famous paintings by Frans Hals and other ancient, modern and contemporary art, as well as the museum café. Location Hal regularly hosts exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.
The Hofje van Willem Heythuijsen is a hofje in Haarlem, Netherlands. It was founded in 1650 by the testament of Willem van Heythuysen on the site of his summer residence outside the city walls of Haarlem on land that was considered Heemstede property until it was annexed in 1927. It is one of the few hofjes of Haarlem to be built outside the city walls. It has a 'T' shape and has a small open courtyard and a garden still intact.
Poppy Flowers is a painting by Vincent van Gogh with an estimated value of US$55 million which was stolen from Cairo's Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum twice; first in 1977, then again in August 2010 and has yet to be found.
Singer Laren is a museum and concert hall located in the center of Laren, the Netherlands. The museum is devoted to presenting and preserving the collection of the American artist William Henry Singer Jr. (1868–1943) and his wife Anna (1878–1962).
The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, alternatively named The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring or Spring Garden, is an early oil painting by 19th-century Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, created in May 1884 while he was living with his parents in Nuenen. Van Gogh made several drawings and oil paintings of the surrounding gardens and the garden façade of the parsonage.
In October 1885 Vincent van Gogh made a series of paintings of Amsterdam during a visit: View of Amsterdam from Central Station and The De Ruijterkade in Amsterdam.
The St. Elisabeth Gasthuis (EG) is a former hospital complex of buildings founded in 1581 in Haarlem on the Gasthuisvest. The last location of the hospital on the Boerhaavelaan retains its hospital function and is part of the Spaarne Gasthuis (SG) today, formerly known as Kennemer Gasthuis (KG). The hospital complex on the Gasthuisvest was built for the "Minnebroers" monastery and was reclaimed after the Protestant reformation in 1581 and given by the city council to the hospital. As a hospital during four centuries, the complex underwent many major renovations. The main facade dates from 1871.
Laughing Boy is a circular oil-on-panel painting by the Dutch artist Frans Hals. It belongs to the tronie genre and was painted around 1625. It is in the collection of the Mauritshuis.
The Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden is a museum and former hofje in Leerdam, Netherlands, on the Kerkstraat.
Mevrouw van Aerden, née Maria Ponderus, was an 18th-century art collector and hofje founder from the Northern Netherlands.
Yonker Ramp and His Sweetheart is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in 1623 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. The painting has also been titled as Young Man and Woman in an Inn or Portrait of Pieter Ramp.
Two singing boys with a lute and a music book is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted c. 1625 and now in the Museum Schloss Wilhelmshöhe.
St. Matthew is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in 1625 and now in the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art, Odesa.
The Smoker is an oil-on-panel painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in 1626 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
A Youth with a Jug is a 1633 oil painting by Judith Leyster currently in a private collection.
The Nationalmuseum robbery was the robbery of three paintings worth a combined total of $30–45 million USD from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden, on 22 December 2000. The stolen paintings were a self-portrait by Rembrandt and two Renoir paintings, Conversation and Young Parisian. The paintings have been recovered.
The Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat is a work by the Dutch Golden-Age artist Frans Hals. It was painted in about 1625–1635 and hangs in the Herzogliches Museum, part of the Friedenstein Palace complex at Gotha, Germany. It was stolen in 1979, recovered in 2019, and restored in 2020–2021.