JP Morgan Chase Sues Dutch Museum Over Painting

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Apr 20th 2009 at 7:01AM

The beautiful painting shown above is now part of a dispute between Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and JP Morgan Chase. The painting, Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde's The Bend in the Herengracht near the Nieuwe Spiegelstraat in Amsterdam (1672), was purchased by the museum from Dutch businessman Louis Reijtenbagh last year. But it turns out that the painting is on a list of art that Reijtenbagh used as collateral to secure a loan. The bank got most of his art collection earlier this month and now wants this painting too. JP Morgan Chase filed a claim in a New York federal court to seize the painting saying that the businessman shouldn't have sold it to the museum if he was using it as loan collateral.

The painting is currently in Washington D.C. It is on loan to the National Gallery through May 3 as part of the exhibition "Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age."

Tags: amsterdam, art, jp morgan chase, JpMorganChase, painting, Rijksmuseum