The now 88-year-old Rose-Marie Silbermann-Frenkel wants to get back a precious painting that she donated to the Rijksmuseum in 2013, NRC reports. The family has since seized the artwork.
The now 88-year-old Rose-Marie Silbermann-Frenkel wants to get back a precious painting that she donated to the Rijksmuseum in 2013, NRC reports. The family has since seized the artwork.
This is a painting by the Utrecht painter and designer Bart van der Leck from 1918, which is now worth around 350,000 euros.
Silbermann-Frenkel says that she donated the painting in a confused state and that she was incompetent at the time of the donation. Her seventeen-year-old granddaughter then had a brain tumor. Voices in Silbermann-Frenkel’s head told her to give the painting as a sacrifice so that her granddaughter could survive.
The family says the museum has not complied with its duty to investigate. The current director Taco Dibbits has informed NRC in a response that the museum has acted “in good faith”. If the judge decides otherwise, the museum will return the painting.