Row over Rembrandt ends in acrimony as painting remains in UK
A BIZARRE art world row over the future of one of the “finest portraits ever made” by Rembrandt van Rijn appears finally to have ended in acrimony and confusion.
The battle for the Portrait
of Catrina Hooghsaet has pitted an anonymous wealthy collector and the auctioneering giant Sotheby’s against the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
Art Fund, the national charity, had planned to start a campaign to raise more than £22 million in public funds to buy the work for the nation today.
The appeal was to have been a response to an attempt by the painting’s new private owner to lift an export licence ban that prevented it from being shipped abroad from its Welsh home.
But Art Fund has issued a last-minute statement halting the fundraising drive after the application was suddenly withdrawn – while continuing to insist the painting’s future “remains perilously unsafe”.
The painting has been in the UK since the early 18thcentury, and was included in a major exhibition at the National Gallery last year which later travelled to Holland.
It has been owned by the Douglas-Pennant family, who hung it at Penrhyn Castle, North Wales, since 1860. In 2007 Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum raised £26.6 million to purchase it – a bid that was rejected by the Penrhyn Settled Estate. However, notice that a £35 million sale was under way was given to the Arts Council in June this year.
Facing what the Arts Council call the “last chance” to save the work for the nation, Ed Vaizey, the Culture Minister, deferred granting an export licence until at least February 2016.
But, in a dramatic twist, on Friday, Art Fund announced: “At 3.30pm today the Art Fund received a call from Sotheby’s to say that they would be withdrawing their application for an export licence on behalf of their overseas buyer, and that the work would instead remain in this country for the time being. The Art Fund believes that the future of the painting remains perilously unsafe.”
It remains unclear quite why the export application has been withdrawn, or why Art Fund believes the painting is still under threat.
Art Fund was unavailable for comment.