![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/06e91a280554427be3be6e793606e4a58f3b8a91-4852x6000.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\nA court ruling that hung on a single French sentence has found that a Dutch museum does not have to return a bequest of 25 paintings, including five Rembrandts.<\/p>\n
Abraham Bredius, once the director of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, left a group of paintings to the public museum in a will made in Monaco in 1944. It said that the works must remain on display exclusively in that museum\u2014or, in the original French, that \u201c[ils] devront rester expos\u00e9s exclusivement dans ledit Mus\u00e9e\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, since not all of the paintings are on permanent show there, the heirs of Bredius\u2019s partner, Joseph Kronig, went to court to ask for their return. They pointed out that the will did not mention storing some of the works in a nearby depot and making them available to view on request or online.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not bring these proceedings because we wish to reclaim the artworks,\u201d said one of the heirs, Otto Kronig, in a statement. \u201cWe brought them because we believe that a testator\u2019s final wishes should be respected. What is troubling about this judgment is that the court does not start from what Bredius actually wrote, but from what museums today consider practical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their lawyer, Gert Jan van den Bergh, said that they would take the case to the appeal court to test the principle that museums only have to follow the terms of a will \u201cuntil a museum finds it inconvenient\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Mauritshuis welcomed the court\u2019s decision last week and said that part of the collection is on permanent display and the rest is on rotation in temporary exhibitions. \u201cAs the lawful custodian of the bequest of former director Abraham Bredius, the Mauritshuis has always handled the works with great care, in accordance with the conditions attached to the bequest,\u201d its directors said in a statement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rembrandt van Rijn, Two African Men (1661) Courtesy of Mauritshuis<\/p>\n
The Bredius bequest includes paintings by Jan Steen and Salomon van Ruysdael plus works by Rembrandt\u2014which are still on display\u2014such as Saul and David (c.1651-58) and Two African Men (1661).<\/p>\n
Olav Velthuis, a sociology professor at the University of Amsterdam who has studied cultural philanthropy, says that if the heirs win on appeal, it could make museums more hesitant about donations, since gifts must always \u201ccompete\u201d with subsequent additions to the collection. \u201cGuaranteeing that donated works will permanently and forever be on display in the museum is a commitment that museums are unable and unwilling to make,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
It is not the first case to test the limits of a public donation. Last year, the London art dealer Angus Neill asked the National Gallery in London to return his gift, Christ Carrying the Cross (c.1500), attributed to the workshop of 15th-century painter Giovanni Bellini, because it was taken off display.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A court ruling that hung on a single French sentence has found that a Dutch museum does not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,221961,6359,103834],"class_list":["post-707689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-mauritshaus","tag-museums-heritage","tag-rembrandt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}