Eight valuable paintings, including a Renoir and a Pissarro, have been recovered by Dutch police more than two decades after they were stolen from a gallery.

Dutch officials recover missing paintings, showing a painting by Jan Brueghel in Driebergen, Netherlands.

The works, dating from the 17th and 19th centuries, were located when they were offered for sale. Some of the works – which disappeared from the Noortman gallery in the southern city of Maastricht in 1987 – were damaged after being folded.

"The suspects were apparently trying to sell the art works to the insurance company that had paid out €2.27 million [£2 million] after they went missing," said a spokesman for the Dutch National Prosecutor's Office. "An expert will establish their value."

The works were by the 17th-century artists David Teniers, Willem van de Velde and Jan Brueghel the Younger (pictured) and the 19th-century painters Eva Gonzales, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Paul Desiré Trouillebert.

Two men and a woman were arrested and were due to appear in court on Monday.

Prosecutors said investigators were still trying to work out where the paintings had been since their disappearance 22 years ago. Six were found in Valkenburg and two more in the nearby village of Walem, where one of the suspects lived. Both towns are in the Maastricht area.

It was the second time in six months that valuable art had been recovered in Holland. Last September, five paintings stolen from the Frans Hals Museum in 2002 and valued at £2.4 million were retrieved.