Vincent van Gogh once said, “The diseases that we civilized people labour under most are melancholy and pessimism.”

Perhaps the COVID-19 disease should be added to that list, after thieves laboured through a coronavirus lockdown in the Netherlands to steal one of van Gogh’s paintings from an art museum.

The Van Gogh painting 'Spring Garden in Nuenen' has been stolen from a museum in the Dutch town of Laren.

Van Gogh, who struggled with mental illness throughout his life, was staying with his parents when he painted Spring Garden in Nuenen in 1884. He was 31 years old at the time.

Police said on Monday there had been a break in at the Singer Laren Museum at 03:15 local time (02:15 GMT).

The break-in triggered an alarm but the thieves had already escaped by the time police showed up.

The museum later announced that Van Gogh’s Spring Garden, on loan from the Groninger Museum, was missing.

The Singer Laren Museum is closed due to the coronavirus. Its director, Jan Rudolph de Lorm, told reporters he was "incredibly pissed off" over the theft.

The value of the painting is not currently known but another work from the same period recently sold for around US$13.5m.

The museum was created in the 1950s to host the collection of US artist William Henry Singer and his wife Anna.

“I’m shocked and unbelievably annoyed that this has happened,” said Jan Rudolph de Lorm, Singer Laren museum director, in a statement.

On Monday the Dutch health ministry reported 11,750 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the country, and a total of 864 deaths.