Michel van Rijn

In this Dutch name, the surname is Van Rijn, not Rijn.

Michel van Rijn
Van Rijn in 2011
Born1950 (1950)
Netherlands
Died (aged 73)
Italy
OccupationArt smuggler
Years active1960s–1990s

Michel van Rijn (1950 – July 2024) was a Dutch art smuggler, art trader, art forger and author. He was involved in worldwide art smuggling from the 1960s to 1990s. Scotland Yard estimated that he was involved in 80 to 90% of all international art smuggling during the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s and 2000s Van Rijn cooperated with authorities in finding stolen pieces of art.

Life

Van Rijn was born in 1950 and grew up in Amsterdam. His father was a dentist and his mother an artist.[1] Van Rijn stated that his mother was of Jewish descent.[2] His father owned a large collection of tribal art and artists frequented the house, all of which made the young Van Rijn interested in art.[1] Van Rijn stated that by age 15 he had already been kicked out of seven schools.[3] At age 15 Van Rijn went to Istanbul, Turkey, where he bought coats which he sold in the Netherlands.[1] At age 17 he settled in Beirut, Lebanon, and subsequently got involved in art smuggling in the former Soviet Union.[4] Through an Armenian contact he got involved with icons.[1] During the 1960s and 1970s he smuggled art from the Soviet Union and Armenia to Israel. In this period he also smuggled Fabergé eggs.[2] He smuggled art from the Middle East and Cuba.[4] He stated that he smuggled art from Cuba until the late 1980s.[5] At one point Van Rijn smuggled artwork into both Europe and the United States and he was pursued by both Interpol and the CIA.[6] Scotland Yard estimated that Van Rijn was involved in 80–90% of all international art smuggling in the 1970s and 1980s.[4] Van Rijn had a playboy lifestyle, owning various houses.[4]

Van Rijn was convicted in France for art forgery sometime before 1988.[7] He was once arrested in Marbella, Spain and faced extradition to France.[3][8] During the 1990s Van Rijn started cooperating with authorities. He said he was inspired to do so after seeing Nok culture sculptures in Nigeria being protected by locals as they revered the statues.[1][3] In subsequent years he worked with the Israeli Mossad, the American FBI, and the British Scotland Yard in the pursuit of stolen art.[2][5] As an art trader he owned a store on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam.[9]

Van Rijn was known as a controversial man in the art scene and as a man of deception, who did not deny he broke the law at times.[8] He was also known for his tall tales.[4] He once claimed to be a descendant of Rembrandt van Rijn in order to double the price of a work by the painter.[1] He also misled auction house Sotheby's in an act of revenge by providing them with a forged work, of which he only on the date of the auction revealed it was forged.[9] Van Rijn was also an art forger himself, he claimed to have replicated a painting by Marc Chagall and took a picture with Chagall and the painting, helping him claim a genuine provenance.[4] Van Rijn made numerous enemies.[4][8] He claimed to have been shot at three times, once receiving a grazing shot while in Amsterdam.[3] In the United States he was questioned for two days by the FBI in relation to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft.[9][10]

Van Rijn was involved in the return of art taken during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, which had been sold on the black market.[6] During the mid-1990s he sold back art for half a million dollars to Cypriot honorary consul Tasoula Hadjitofi in the Netherlands. In total he sold back involved artworks at two occasions, earning millions.[1][8] He knew further artworks were in Germany. Together with a Cypriot official and two persons from Interpol he arranged to meet a Turkish-born seller, Aydın Dikmen, of such artworks in Munich in 1997.[6][11] The operation managed to recover $40 million worth of art.[5] Van Rijn however refused to testify against the seller, having received death threats.[6] It was later revealed that Van Rijn and Dikmen had also been involved in the sale of the royal doors of Peristeronopigi, which had travelled from Cyprus to the Netherlands and later to the Kanazawa College of Art in Japan, from which they were ultimately returned to Cyprus in 2021.[12][13]

Around the year 2000 he stopped his cooperation with authorities and he started a website in which he provided information on stolen art and indicated who might be responsible for the theft.[1][5] In 2000 Scotland Yard announced that it would launch in an investigation of the contacts between the organisation and Van Rijn.[14] In 2002 Van Rijn met Arthur Brand, who over time became his assistant.[15] In January 2005 Van Rijn spent five days in Swiss detention after being arrested on suspicion of extortion. He was arrested at Basel airport. Van Rijn had stated that two Lebanese brothers had unlawful possession of a bronze Apollo statue and one of the brothers filed a complaint against Van Rijn. Van Rijn was released due to a lack of evidence.[16] In 2006, while cooperating with Scotland Yard, Van Rijn managed to return a stolen Moche headdress from the possession of Leonardo Patterson to Peru.[17]

In 2015 Van Rijn had a falling out with several people, including his former assistant, Arthur Brand. Several people claimed Van Rijn had not paid for services provided to him and had overvalued paintings he sold them. Van Rijn claimed Brand led a smear campaign against him after the two parted ways around 2009.[18] In 2017 he had a further falling out with German art collector Tilman Bohn, Lebanese billionaire Halim Korban and Dutch investor Boudewijn Sanders. Van Rijn replied to the claims against him with a cryptic e-mail to publisher Quote.[19]

Personal life

Van Rijn had several children, including two sons.[18][19][2] He became friends with art investigator Arthur Brand and British painter Lucian Freud.[1][2] Van Rijn spent some time in a rehabilitation clinic in Curaçao.[18] Throughout his life Van Rijn obtained various nicknames, and a BBC reporter named him the "Indiana Jones of Chelsea". He was also called "The Lying Dutchman".[1] He was also compared to James Bond and Al Capone.[4]

Van Rijn lived in various places, including Rome and Havana.[1] He also lived in London, United Kingdom.[2] At one point he lived in Livorno, Italy.[18] Van Rijn lived his final years in Italy. He died there in July 2024, aged 73.[6]

In media

In the 1990s RTL made a program about him.[20] The Dutch public broadcaster AVRO made a documentary about Van Rijn in 2006.[6] In 2007 he was featured in the show Hoge bomen in de misdaad.[1] Van Rijn's life was made into a film in the 2016 thriller The Iconoclast by Adam Stone.[6][21]

Works

  • Hot Art Cold Cash, 1993.[6]
  • Het Mekka Manuscript.[6]
  • Cuba Libre[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Menno van Dongen (31 July 2024). "Van kunstsmokkelaar tot superdetective: Michel van Rijn (1950-2024) was 'de Indiana Jones van Chelsea'" (in Dutch). de Volkskrant. Archived from the original on 16 July 2025.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Mark Koster (24 October 2012). "Michel van Rijn: 'Rotterdamse kunstrovers zijn amateurs'" (in Dutch). The Post Online. Archived from the original on 3 August 2025.
  3. ^ a b c d Jake Hanrahan (15 October 2012). "Een gesprek met de succesvolste smokkelaar van de kunstwereld" (in Dutch). VICE. Archived from the original on 14 December 2019.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Harmen van Dijk (31 July 2024). "Kunstsmokkelaar Michel van Rijn stond lang op de opsporingslijsten. Tot hij de politie ging helpen" (in Dutch). Trouw. Retrieved 24 January 2026.
  5. ^ a b c d Dan Bell (22 August 2006). "The 'Indiana Jones' of Chelsea". BBC. Archived from the original on 13 December 2025.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Kunstsmokkelaar en auteur Michel van Rijn (73) overleden" (in Dutch). Het Parool. 30 July 2024. Retrieved 24 January 2026.
  7. ^ Riesenfeld, Stefan A.; Pakter, Walter J. (27 November 2023). Comparative Law Casebook: Volume 2. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-53214-4. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  8. ^ a b c d Rob Gollin; Bob Witman (6 June 1997). "Met scrupules kom je niet ver in deze handel" (in Dutch). de Volkskrant. Archived from the original on 14 October 2019. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  9. ^ a b c Stieven Ramdharie (4 September 1995). "Van Rijn: gladde handelaar of vuile oplichter" (in Dutch). de Volkskrant. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  10. ^ Geraldine Norman (22 December 1996). "What Interpol wants for Christmas". The Independent. Archived from the original on 26 October 2013.
  11. ^ Gerda Frankenhuis (6 April 2013). "Kunstschatten terug naar Cyprus" (in Dutch). de Telegraaf. Archived from the original on 30 November 2021.
  12. ^ "Tale of first looted religious relic returned from Japan". Financial Mirror. 4 September 2021. Archived from the original on 7 September 2025.
  13. ^ Kyriaki Christodoulou (5 September 2021). "Religious artifact's long and winding road home". Cyprus Mail. Archived from the original on 23 July 2025.
  14. ^ Bob Witman (4 February 2000). "Smokkelaar Van Rijn tergt Scotland Yard" (in Dutch). de Volkskrant. Retrieved 24 January 2026.
  15. ^ Tjerk Gualthérie Van Weezel (28 July 2016). "Tussen Kunst en Criminaliteit" (in Dutch). de Volkskrant. Archived from the original on 8 August 2020.
  16. ^ "Kunsthandelaar vijf dagen vast in Zwitserland" (in Dutch). de Volkskrant. 28 January 2005. Retrieved 24 January 2026.
  17. ^ "Leonardo Patterson". University of Stanford - Cultural Heritage Resource. 20 October 2008. Archived from the original on 11 March 2016.
  18. ^ a b c d Mark Koster (2 July 2015). "Ex-zakenpartners jagen op vermogen van kunsthandelaar Michel van Rijn" (in Dutch). Quotenet. Archived from the original on 23 April 2021.
  19. ^ a b Mark Koster; Onno den Hollander (19 May 2017). "Kunstboef Michel van Rijn slaat weer toe: Kunstverzamelaars en vastgoedondernemer voor tonnen 'opgelicht'" (in Dutch). Quotenet. Archived from the original on 16 January 2025.
  20. ^ "Auteur en kunsthandelaar Michel van Rijn overleden" (in Dutch). RTL News. 30 July 2024. Archived from the original on 13 November 2025.
  21. ^ "The Iconoclast". British Council. 12 May 2025. Archived from the original on 12 December 2025.
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