Two days ago there was a thread thread about modern art trade in relation to Pizzagate: https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1760628

It might be worth noting that there are two recent developments concerning classic art: paintings by Dutch masters, in particular Rembrandt.

On story is about the purchase of two Rembrandt paintings by the Dutch and the French governments in 2015, for 160 million Euros, from Éric de Rothschild. Nice paintings, but not so very special, certainly not when compared to other Rembrandts. I think the price is about a factor of 10 too high. The Dutch media presented the acquisition as a wise decision by the Minister of Culture: the French had also been wanting the paintings; there had been a tough bidding phase; luckily for the Dutch people, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam would share the Rembrandts with the Louvre in Paris. Everybody was happy, including Mr. De Rothschild of course.

The other story concerns an exhibition of the so called Leiden Collection in Paris. This collection includes Rembrandts and other paintings of Dutch masters, and it is owned by the billionaire Thomas Kaplan. I do not know any incriminatory facts about Kaplan, but I find some elements of his biography on Wikipedia suspect. In particular he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he funded a transplantation center at the University of Miami, and he created a "Daisy and Paul Soros/Recanati-Kaplan Family Assistant Professor in Preventive Cardiology".

Kaplan was in the news in The Netherlands last 19th February. Incidentally George Webb talked that day about a George Soros project for organ transplantations in Haiti with involvement of the University of Miami. See for instance this video at 2m22s: https://youtu.be/-7l9jlYnZYY?t=2m22s

The Guardian

30 September 2015: France and Netherlands to jointly buy rare Rembrandts 17th-century paintings worth €160m belonging to Rothschilds will alternate between Rijksmuseum and Louvre

The Netherlands and France will together buy two rare Rembrandts for a total of €160m (£118m), the Dutch culture minister has announced, after the two countries defused a potential bidding war.

The 17th-century paintings, which belong to the Rothschild banking family and have rarely been seen in public, will alternate between the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Louvre in Paris, Jet Bussemaker said in a letter to the Dutch parliament.

(...)

The marital portraits of Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit are believed to be in the collection of French banker Eric de Rothschild.

(...)

According to the Dutch daily paper NRC, the paintings were reportedly sold to the Rothschilds in 1877 for 1.5m guilders, despite attempts by the Dutch government at the time to keep them in the Netherlands. The Rothschild family in 2013 first indicated it wanted to sell the paintings, NRC added.

(...)

• https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/30/france-netherlands-rembrandts-louvre-rijksmuseum
• http://archive.is/W65ay

Nieuwsuur

Nieuwsuur, a Dutch national TV news show, had this item on 19 February 2017:

• http://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2159022-hollandse-meesters-veroveren-het-louvre.html
• http://archive.is/g120X
• http://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/video/2159111-hollandse-meesters-veroveren-het-louvre.html
• http://archive.is/txY9h

From 4m35s Kaplan talks about the changing world in Rembrandt's lifetime; the progress, enlightenment and tolerance in the Netherlands was a beacon for other countries.

Louvre Museum

As part of its season devoted to the Dutch Golden Age, the Musée du Louvre is presenting a selection of masterpieces by 17th-century Dutch painters from the collection of Thomas Kaplan and his wife, Daphne Recanati Kaplan. This selection, brought together at a major international museum for the first time, showcases the largest private collection of works by Rembrandt. Visitors will discover some thirty paintings and drawings by the greatest painters of the Golden Age from the region of Leiden in the Netherlands, primarily ten works by Rembrandt and a painting recently attributed to the artist.

(...)

After Masterpieces of the Leiden Collection. The Age of Rembrandt has been shown at the Louvre, an expanded group of approximately 60 highlights will travel to the Long Museum in Shanghai and the National Museum in Beijing in 2017 and 2018 and to the Louvre Abu Dhabi before returning to Europe and the United States.

• http://www.louvre.fr/en/expositions/masterpieces-leiden-collection-age-rembrandt

Wikipedia

Baron Éric Alain Robert David de Rothschild (born October 3, 1940) is a French banker and philanthropist. Éric de Rothschild was born in October 3, 1940 in New York City. His father was Alain de Rothschild. His uncle was Élie de Rothschild. He took over the management of Château Lafite Rothschild from his uncle in 1973.

He is the chairman of the UK Private Banking & Trust. He is on the supervisory board of Paris Orléans, which manages €28.3 billion of assets. He was listed as a beneficiary of an offshore account by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which released the full list of companies and individuals in the Panama Papers on 10 May 2016.

He is the honorary president of the Grand Synagogue of Paris. He has been the chairman of the Shoah Memorial, a museum about The Holocaust in Paris, since 2001. In 2012, he called for the teaching of the Holocaust in French schools, to combat antisemitism and all forms of racism.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Éric_de_Rothschild

Thomas S. Kaplan (born 1962) is an American entrepreneur, natural resources investor, philanthropist and art collector. He is the chairman and chief investment officer of The Electrum Group LLC, a New York City-based investment, advisory and asset management firm with a focus on the natural resources sector.

(...)

On a business trip, he met his future wife, Dafna Recanati (the daughter of Israeli investor Leon Recanati), who had attended the same boarding school as Kaplan. Dafna's mother, artist Mira Recanati, introduced him to Israeli investor Avi Tiomkin, who hired him as a junior partner in 1991. Kaplan had impressed Tiomkin by correctly predicting Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait several years before it took place. When Tiomkin decided to concentrate his investments solely in Israel in 1993, Kaplan moved on to execute his own entrepreneurial ventures.

(...)

Kaplan is the executive chairman of Panthera Corporation, a charity which he and his wife co-founded in 2006. Panthera is devoted to preserving the big cats and their ecosystems and has been recognized as a leading force in felid conservation.

(...)

The Kaplans have funded the Lillian Jean Kaplan Renal Transplantation Center at the University of Miami as well as a variety of prizes and grants for medical science research. In 2012, the Kaplans created the Daisy and Paul Soros/Recanati-Kaplan Family Assistant Professor in Preventive Cardiology, a position held by Dr. Bassem Masri.

(...)

Kaplan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as the International Council at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where Kaplan, scholar Graham Allison and decorated American General David Petraeus created the Recanati-Kaplan Foundation Fellows Program. Intended to "intersect history with policy, intelligence, strategic studies, and maybe a little common sense," the program brings together intelligence officers from several countries. According to the Belfer Center, "Each fellow undertakes rigorous research projects, doing in-depth studies of everything from combatting terrorism to leading more effective organizations. They meet in small sessions with leaders in the intelligence field—directors and former directors of CIA, NSA, DIA—and other foreign and domestic intelligence agencies... Recanati-Kaplan Fellows are the best of the best: As the Center’s website notes, applicants must come with the personal recommendation of their agency heads."

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kaplan