If you were not basking in the beautiful day – say, whitewater rafting or lounging by a pool – you might have chosen to hop a flight to Zurich
to gaze at some art treasures.
But you would have been a day late if you were planning on communing with this exquisite painting – Blossoming Chestnut Branches (1890) by Mr. Van Gogh.
About 4:30 Sunday night shortly before closing time, three hoodlums wearing ski masks and bearing guns entered the Emile Buhrle Foundation, the biggest privately owned collection of French impressionist paintings in the world, and ordered staff and visitors to lie on the floor.
They removed a row of four paintings – the Van Gogh, Monet’s Poppy Field at Vetheuil, Degas‘ Ludovic Lepic and His Daughter and Cezanne’s Boy in the Red Waistcoat.
The thieves left in a white car, the truck open and the paintings visible within.
The total value of the heist is about $163 million.
