Dutch police announced on Tuesday that they have arrested a 58-year-old man on suspicion of stealing two yet-to-be-recovered paintings - one by Vincent van Gogh and the other by Frans Hals - from museums in the Netherlands. The paintings were stolen last year at the height of the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Police said the man was arrested at his home in the central town of Baarn after he came up as a suspect in the theft case involving Van Gogh's 1884 painting “De Lentetuin” -  which in English is known as "the Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring" - which was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam (where it was on loan from the Groninger Museum) on 30 March 2020; and "Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer," a painting by Hals in 1626, which was stolen from the Museum Hofje Van Aerden in Leerdam on the 27th of August last year.

Police have declined to release the name of the suspect.

"This morning my colleagues arrested a 58-year-old man in Baarn and we suspect him of stealing two paintings by Frans Hals and Van Gogh," police spokeswoman Maren Wonder said in a video statement released on Twitter. 

Wonder who confirmed that the paintings have not yet been found urged anyone with information on the matter to inform authorities.

In the case of the stolen Van Gogh painting, police at the time said the thief or thieves broke a large glass door at the front of the museum and tripped a burglar alarm. The painting, which is about 15 inches by 28 inches, depicts the garden of the Dutch Reformist Church in Nuenen, which is where van Gogh's father was a vicar.

However, in June, Dutch art detective Arthur Brand said he received "proof of life" photos of the painting, which included a copy of The New York Times dated May 30 and the cover of the book Master Thief: The Bizarre Experiences of Van Gogh Robber Okkie Durham.

Meanwhile, the Hals painting has been stolen and recovered twice before - once in 1988 along with a Jacob van Ruidael painting, and again in 2011.

This case of art theft follows a long line of famous paintings that have been stolen from museums and private holdings. The world's most famous portrait, Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," was stolen in 1911 from the Louvre in Paris by a young Italian named Vincenzo Peruggia. He disguised himself as a member of the museum staff and hid the relatively small painting under his work coat. The painting eventually reappeared in 1913 after an art dealer alerted the police.

The burglary of thirteen paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, however, didn’t have a happy ending and the empty picture frames are still hanging on the walls of the museum till today.