MAURITSHUIS: Court case looms regarding bequest to the museum in The Hague
Photo credit: CC/Zairon
The heirs of Abraham Bredius are suing the Mauritshuis art museum in The Hague and demanding the return of his bequest of 25 paintings.
They include works by Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Jan van Goyen, Paulus Moreelse and Salomon van Ruysdael but of the 25 paintings only four Rembrandts and a Van Ruysdael are on view, they said.
The Rembrandts include the 1661 double portrait “Two African Men”, a seldom-seen depiction of free Black men in the Netherlands of that time.
Bredius, an art historian and a former director of the Mauritshuis who died in 1946, stipulated in his will that all the paintings – which he left to the Mauritshuis at the museum’s own request – should be displayed to the public, the heirs told the NRC newspaper.
Bredius, an expert who specialised in 17th century Dutch paintings, headed the Mauritshuis between 1889 and 1909. He had already donated part of his collection to the art museum by the early 1900s and noticed that the pictures were placed in an area near a staircase with little light.
“He did not want this to happen again,” explained Gert Jan van den Bergh, the lawyer representing the heirs, who are not related to Bredius but are the descendants of Josephs protégé, Kronig (1887-1984).
Bredius and Kronig spent much of their lives together, and Kronig was his sole heir.
Van den Bergh stressed that his clients were not interested in money and had no intention of selling the pictures once they were returned.
“Kronig’s descendants say that you accept the terms of a gift, with the conditions attached, or you don’t accept the gift,” Van den Bergh said. “But what has happened is that they have accepted the bequest but not the conditions. And so, at some point, you have to ask a judge to intervene.”
One of the claimants, Otto Kronig compared the Mauritshuis display to a slap in the face for Abraham Bredius.
“If he had known this, he wouldn’t have made that bequest.”
A summons has now been delivered to the Mauritshuis and the Dutch state, the art museum’s owner. Asked to comment, the art museum stated that this was not possible while the case was ongoing.
Nevertheless, the museum explained in 2019 that it preferred not to show “Study of an Old Woman” and “Tronie of an Old Man”, which Bredius donated as Rembrandts. Instead, they are listed as “after” Rembrandt and of “uncertain” attribution.
