An early Vincent van Gogh painting that was stolen from a Dutch museum in 2020 has just returned to public display.

Six years ago, the Groninger Museum’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884) was on loan at the Singer Laren when a thief smashed through the museum’s glass door entrance in the early hours of the morning and departed with the Van Gogh. In 2023, following the exertions of Dutch police and the art sleuth Arthur Brand, the painting was returned to the Groninger Museum inside an Ikea bag and wrapped in an old pillowcase.

Vincent van Gogh, The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884). ©Groninger Museum.

As Richard Bronswijk, head of Dutch police’s art crime unit, told media at the time: “This is definitely the real one, there’s no doubt about it.” Transparency is a celebrated Dutch virtue and, true to form, the Groninger Museum initially displayed The Parsonage Garden—scars and all.

Even so, the painting was in need of restoration. That task fell to the conservator Marjan de Visser, who, over the course of several months, not only undid the effects of its stint outside the carefully controlled conditions of the museum, but also removed the work of earlier restorations. Today, the parsonage looks as it did when Van Gogh painted it more than 140 years ago.

The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring on view at the Groninger Museum. Photo: Niels Knelis.

Van Gogh made the oak panel painting while living with his parents in Nuenen, where his father had been appointed as the pastor of a small Reformed congregation. He depicts a woman walking across the garden of the parsonage where his family lived, an elongated scene of drab, inter-seasonal trees backgrounded by a church tower that the artist would include in more than 30 works (he lived in Nuenen from late 1883 to 1885).

Ahead of the work’s 1903 sale at a Rotterdam gallery, an amateur painter had added details to the woman’s face. The goal was to make the painting more attractive to would-be buyers of the Van Gogh, who was still relatively unknown at the time. De Visser removed such details and also discovered that Van Gogh’s original title referred to a winter garden.

Analysis of Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring at the Groninger Museum. Photo: Denzel Feurich.

Other changes to the painting were less obvious. Using Van Gogh’s letters and the latest analytical technologies, de Visser was able to identify areas of overpainting. Clues included ever-so-slightly thicker layers of paint, cracks that had been covered over, the use of brown pigments, and areas of dark purple that became visible under UV light. Visitors to the Groninger Museum can play conservator themselves, with a digital screen beside the painting displaying before and after photographs.

“We are very happy that it is back,” the museum’s Karina Smrkovsky told Dutch broadcaster RTV Noord. “This work is very special to the museum. We do have more works by Van Gogh in the collection, but this is the only painting.”