Dutch bank challenges JP Morgan, Rijksmuseum over masterpiece

THE HAGUE, April 22, 2009 (AFP) - Dutch bank ABN Amro squared up to US rival JP Morgan Chase and Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum Wednesday over the rights to an artwork the museum bought from a man who used it as loan collateral, twice.

"We have instituted legal action against Mr (Louis) Reijtenbagh, who used the painting as collateral for a loan with us, but as we learnt through the media, also with JP Morgan," ABN Amro spokesman Jeroen van Maarschalkerweerd told AFP.

"We are asking the court to determine who has the first claim on the painting."
The district court in Amsterdam said the demand would be heard on Friday.

Entitled "The bend in the Herengracht", a famous canal in Amsterdam, the 17th century work by Dutch painter Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde was acquired by the Rijksmuseum from Reijtenbagh, a wealthy art collector, last September.

It is currently on loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington for an exhibition ending on May 3.

The Rijksmuseum said last week it had received notice of a claim by JP Morgan, filed with a US federal court on April 1.

"Our (the museum's) position is that we are the rightful owners," the museum's director of collections, Taco Dibbits, told AFP at the time, describing the painting as a "masterpiece of national importance".

Reijtenbagh is reported to have used the painting with other works of art as collateral for a 50-million-dollar (38 million euro) loan from JP Morgan in 2006 before selling it to the museum for several million dollars last year.

Some 27 million dollars is said to be outstanding on that loan, which has run full term. But Dibbits has said that the seller signed a sales contract that indemnified the museum against any third party claims.

Van Maarschalkerweerd would not provide any details about Reijtenbagh's ANB Amro loan.

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The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam is the principal museum of the Netherlands and one of the top 10 Museums in the world. The Rijksmuseum houses a large and World famous collec­tion of objects of Dutch art and history. Every year more than one million people visit the Rijksmuseum. From December 2003 the mainbuilding of the Rijksmuseum undergoes the most far-reaching renovation, reconstruction and restoration endeavour in its history.
Web Site: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl