page_title: Posthumous fame of Vincent van Gogh
section_title: Theft
hierarchical_section_title: Posthumous fame of Vincent van Gogh / Theft
context_page_description: The fame of Vincent van Gogh began to spread in France and Belgium during the last year of his life, and in the years after his death in the Netherlands and Germany. His friendship with his younger brother Theo was documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. The letters were published in three volumes in 1914 by Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, Theo's widow, who also generously supported most of the early Van Gogh exhibitions with loans from the artist's estate. Publication of the letters helped spread the compelling mystique of Vincent van Gogh, the intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young, throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
  His fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before World War I, and at the end of World War I in Switzerland. Due to the economic crisis in Germany and France after 1918, pioneer collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art which included works by Van Gogh were dissolved. Thus, British and American collectors had the opportunity to acquire first rate works relatively late.
context_section_description: Since 1937, when the Nazis confiscated his paintings in Germany, more than 40 of van Gogh's works have been stolen, in at least 15 separate incidents, at galleries across the world.
  In December 2002, two paintings were stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, in a brutal and audacious robbery by experienced, professional thieves. Both of the stolen works were considered important - Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather (1882) was van Gogh's first work in oil and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen was painted by van Gogh for his mother and later adjusted after the death of his father. The daring raid on the gallery, by professional burglar Octave Durham and an accomplice, took only 3 minutes and 40 seconds. After a gap of some 14 years, both works were eventually recovered, in Castellammare di Stabia, near Pompeii, from Italian Camorra drug-lord Raffaele Imperiale.
  On February 10, 2008, van Gogh's Blossoming Chestnut Branches, along with three other paintings, valued at more than $163 million, were stolen from the E.G. Buehrle Collection, a private museum in Zürich, Switzerland, by three armed men.
caption: Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884), painted by van Gogh for his mother
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