Asylum Walk (21)

Blooming eclipses:

Last night, a total lunar eclipse, the last viewable from these parts for three years. Creeping black as earth’s shadow gnawed the moon, followed by a rusty-rose blush for about an hour.

On Monday two of the four paintings stolen from a Zurich museum were found, still under their display glass, only 500 meters from the crime scene, in the back seat of an unlocked white sedan parked outside a psychiatric clinic.

Blooming Chestnut Branches was painted by Van Gogh in May 1890. At one time it was owned by Dr. Paul Gachet, in whose care the painter had been placed at the clinic in Auvers sur Oise. Eventually it, like the other stolen works by Monet, Degas and Cézanne, found their way into the collection of Emil Bührle, a Swiss industrialist.