UK bars export of Rembrandt's £71 million Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet

The British government has placed a temporary export ban on Rembrandt's 1657 Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet, valued at £71.7 million. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport says it is the most expensive object ever given national treasure status. UK museums and other qualifying buyers have until 26 December 2026 to raise the money and keep the canvas in the country.

If a serious offer arrives at the recommended price of £71,696,324.90 plus VAT of £754,698.15, the present owners will have 15 business days to consider it. A second deferral of nine months can follow if an option agreement is signed. If no buyer appears, the painting can leave.

Who she was

Catrina Hooghsaet (1607-1685) sat for Rembrandt at the age of 50. She was a wealthy Amsterdam Mennonite who lived apart from her husband, an arrangement unusual enough that later writers still pause on it. The portrait is life-size. She sits in an armchair, turned slightly left, a handkerchief in her right hand. The dress is the sober black of her community. The silk sheen, the pearl pin, the hairpin, the ring and the gold cap support are not. A parrot appears in the composition; she named the bird in her will.

Two labels on a wall bracket record the facts Rembrandt wanted on the surface: her name, her age, his signature and the year 1657. The canvas measures 123.5 by 95 centimetres. The Rembrandt Research Project catalogues it as a secure work from the late period, when the painter had left the smooth finish of the 1630s for a thicker, more open handling of paint.

How it stayed, left, and stayed again

The portrait has been in Britain since the mid-eighteenth century. It passed through the Pennant family and other private owners and spent time at Penrhyn Castle. It hung at National Museum Cardiff from 2016 to 2019. In 2015 Sotheby's sold it to an overseas buyer for £35 million. Ministers blocked that export too. No UK institution matched the price. The new owner then left the picture in the country.

In 2025 the work changed hands again, this time in a private sale arranged by Christie's. That sale triggered the present licence application and the second export bar. Culture minister Ruth Mackenzie said the painting has belonged to British cultural life for centuries and that its scale, history and quality make it a priority for funders and museums.

The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art recommended the bar on three Waverley grounds: a close connection with British history and national life, outstanding aesthetic importance, and outstanding significance for the study of Rembrandt, Dutch portraiture, and questions of gender, religion and identity in the Dutch Republic.

The money problem

£71.7 million is more than most UK museums can move without a public campaign, a large private gift, or both. The National Gallery, the National Galleries of Scotland and National Museum Cardiff are the obvious candidates. None has announced a bid. The 2015 failure is the relevant precedent. The price has since doubled.

Export bars work when a buyer exists. They fail when the valuation outruns the institutions that are asked to save the object. This one is a test of that mechanism at its upper bound. The painting is not in doubt as a Rembrandt. The only open question is whether Britain will pay what the market now assigns to a late full-length portrait that has already left once on paper and then stayed on a technicality.

December 26 is the first deadline. After that the clock belongs to the owners.