The Art Fund has called for an overhaul of UK export regulations, after a licence application was withdrawn for Rembrandt’s £35m Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet (1657), preventing a public collection from acquiring the work by matching the price. In a statement issued today, 27 October, the fund says there is “a pressing need for major improvements to the systems and procedures that are intended to protect our nation’s treasures”.
The Art Fund had planned to launch a campaign to buy the painting, which has hung in Penrhyn Castle in north Wales for 150 years, for National Museums Wales in Cardiff. Because of tax benefits for a sale to a public collection, it would have needed to raise £22.5m, and planned to start with its own £1m contribution.
The private sale by the Penrhyn family trust has been organised by Sotheby’s, which says that the prospective new foreign owner is approaching institutions to offer the Rembrandt on loan. These could include National Museums Wales and London’s National Gallery. A Sotheby’s spokeswoman says that a loan would mean that the picture “will remain, for some time to come, on view to the public, and no funds will need to be raised in order to make that happen”.
This is probably a short-term solution. The private owner of the portrait may have to wait ten years before they can reapply for an export licence. However, there would then be no tax concessions, which might well make the picture too expensive for a public collection and it would probably leave the country.