Thieves have stolen the painting “Two Laughing Boys” by Dutch golden age artist Frans Hals from a small museum near the Dutch city of Utrecht on Thursday, police said, the third time the canvas has been stolen.

The artwork, valued at $18 million by one expert, and dating from 1626, was taken from the Hofje van Aerden Museum before dawn on Thursday with thieves breaking into the building from the back door.

The painting, featuring two laughing boys with a mug of beer, was previously stolen from the same museum in 2011 and 1988, being recovered after six months and three years respectively. 

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It is the second theft of a painting from a Dutch museum closed to the public because of the COVID-19 pandemic, after a Van Gogh painting “Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring” was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum in March.

“Around 3:30 a.m. the alarm went off, and agents went straight to the museum,” police said in a statement, calling for witnesses. “After the museum’s manager could grant access to the area and building, it emerged that the back door had been forced open and one painting had been stolen.”

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Frans Hals was a contemporary of fellow masters Rembrandt and Vermeer during the Dutch Golden Age, a flowering of trade, colonialism and art in the Netherlands roughly spanning the 17th century.

He is best known for works including “The Laughing Cavalier”, which hangs in the Wallace Collection in London, and “The Gypsy Girl”, now housed in the Louvre in Paris.

Dutch art detective Arthur Brand, dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the art world” after tracking down a series of stolen works, tweeted that “the hunt is on” for the “very important and precious painting by Frans Hals.”