SEVEN paintings, worth millions of pounds, have been stolen from a museum in the Netherlands.
The works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Lucian Freud and Meyer de Haan were taken from Rotterdam's Kunsthal museum.
Experts were unable to put a value on the haul last night, but the theft is one of the art world's most dramatic in recent years.
The stolen paintings were listed as Pablo Picasso's Tête d'Arlequin; Matisse's la Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune; Monet's Waterloo Bridge, London and Charing Cross Bridge, London; Gauguin's Femme devant une fenêtre ouverte, dite la Fiancée; de Haan's Autoportrait; and Freud's Woman with Eyes Closed.
Kunsthal, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, does not have its own collection and exhibits different types of art, including photos, sculptures, design and fashion.
It had only just opened a new exhibition a few days ago to celebrate its 20th anniversary.
It had paintings by Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondriaan, Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Freud, and others showing examples of impressionism, expressionism, and other modern art movements.
More than 150 paintings on display in the exhibit came from the privately owned Triton Foundation collection, and many of the works are worth a million euros or more.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article