Photo: Rebecca Rosman for NPR.
For 20 years, Dutch art detective Arthur Brand has acted as an intermediary between the police and people who know where stolen artwork might be hidden.
Is there one thing that makes someone successful at recovering stolen art?
According to today’s article about Arthur Brand, the secret might be motive. You can’t get both police and thieves to trust you if you are in it for the money. Arthur Brand is in it to save art.
Rebecca Rosman reports from Amsterdam for National Public Radio (NPR), “In his modest IKEA-furnished apartment, Arthur Brand paces to distract himself.
” ‘I’m nervous,'”‘ he says, with the honesty of a man who has learned that bravado is useless in his line of work. He lights a cigarette, leans out the window, and scans the street below. ‘The waiting is the hardest part.’
“Brand, 56, has made a career out of waiting: for a phone call, a knock at the door, and, every once in a blue moon, a Picasso or a Van Gogh left discreetly on his doorstep.
” ‘Those are the moments you realize it’s worth it,’ he says. …
“In another life, Brand says, he’ll take his mother’s advice and ‘find a normal job.’ But in this one, he’s helped recover stolen art for two decades — often the cases police can’t solve alone. …
“He says he has recovered more than 150 stolen paintings and artifacts. His cases regularly make international headlines.
“There’s the stolen Van Gogh that showed up on his doorstep in 2023, stuffed into a blood-soaked pillow in a blue IKEA bag. The Salvador Dali painting he recovered in 2016. The Picasso he tracked down for a Saudi sheikh in 2019. …
” ‘You know, you cannot go to university and say, I want to become an art detective,’ Brand says. ‘This is a job created more or less out of lack of other opportunities.’
“He traces his entry point to Michel van Rijn, a notorious Dutch figure in the art underworld who introduced [him] to a shadowy ecosystem of smugglers, thieves and forgers — and law enforcement.
“After making a cold call to van Rijn’s office, Brand says he became his apprentice in London — which regularly involved sitting quietly in a corner while older men swapped stories. ‘Everybody thought — who is this idiot?’ he says.
“Van Rijn, Brand later discovered, was straddling two sides. In 2009, he walked away after learning his boss was working with police while still keeping ‘one leg’ in the criminal world.
“The experience left him with a simple rule for survival: In a world where people expect betrayal, being honest — and keeping your word — is its own form of power. …
” ‘The police don’t trust the informants. The informants don’t trust the police. So I want to form a bridge between them to see what can be done. And in most cases, it’s possible.’
“The bridge only holds if Brand is seen as independent. ‘I’m not hired by an insurance company,’ he says. ‘The police, of course, don’t pay me. So I do this work [at my own expense].’
“He supports himself by consulting for art galleries and helping Jewish families trace art looted during World War II. But the majority of his energy goes to the work he does on his own dime — acting as a go-between when someone wants to quietly unload a masterpiece they can’t keep.
“Stolen masterpieces, he says, are hard to enjoy and even harder to sell. ‘Who buys stolen art? You cannot show it to your friends. You cannot leave it to your children. ‘
“Dutch police say Brand’s motive matters. Richard Bronswijk, who heads the Dutch police art crime unit, says he’s seen private detectives create problems when money is the driver. … Brand, he points out, has always been driven by something else: the thrill of the chase. …
“Still, sometimes Brand’s trust isn’t enough on its own. When an informant is deciding whether to return stolen art, Brand says fear can take over … of the police, of retaliation, of being tricked.
“That’s when he calls in his ace — Octave Durham.
“In 2002, Durham, already a seasoned bank robber, stole two Van Gogh paintings from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. … ‘I’m a born burglar,’ adding he doesn’t steal anymore but ‘still can.’
“Today, he works with Brand to recover stolen art.”
At NPR, here, you can read how that partnership led to the moment Brand “opened his door and found a blue IKEA bag on his doorstep” with a pillow soaked in blood and a missing Van Gogh.
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