Theft
Thieves stole the early version of The Potato Eaters, the Weaver's Interior, and Dried Sunflowers from the Kröller-Müller Museum in December, 1988. In April, 1989, the thieves returned Weaver's Interior in an attempt to gain a $2.5 million ransom. The police recovered the other two on July 14, 1989. A ransom was not paid.
On April 14, 1991, the Vincent Van Gogh National Museum was robbed of twenty major paintings including the final version of The Potato Eaters. For unknown reasons, the robbers abandoned the art 35 minutes after the robbery, and the paintings were quickly recovered.
Read more about this topic: The Potato Eaters
Famous quotes containing the word theft:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969)
“The childless experts on child raising also bring tears of laughter to my eyes when they say, “I love children because they’re so honest.” There is not an agent in the CIA or the KGB who knows how to conceal the theft of food, how to fake being asleep, or how to forge a parent’s signature like a child.”
—Bill Cosby (20th century)
“Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)