We Want Turner Back! Legal fight goes to Court

Beaverbrook heir wants Freud and Turner back!

Are you ready for this? When is a gift bequeathment not a gift bequeathment?
Not when it is a Turner Painting given to New Brunswick's Beaverbrook Gallery, by the late Lord, himself.

Its reported that Max Aitken, moved to the UK where he gained his peerage - and bought himself a mansion, and he acquired along the way, grandchildren who today want the two most valuable paintings back. The old family mansion is said to cost a fortune to repair, and times are tough nowadays, and the gallery has about $200 million dollars hanging on their walls out there in one of the colonies. Get the story?

The fun begins today, with an open court session in which both sides will trot out their paperwork to determine who gets to keep the collection. The Beaverbrooks have already gone down this road before and the courts settled on the collection staying where it is - in the gallery. But, times have changed and $200 million is a lot of change.

I know of one man who went to court, with his wife pushing him in a wheelchair, and him hoping for a softening of a judicial heart. I wonder if the descendents will appear with runs in stockings, and their elbows poking out of their Harris Tweet jackets?

They've got their eyes set on the two big ones, Fountain of Indolence, by JW Turner, and Hotel Bedroom, by Lucien Freud.

Beaverbrook's descendents have had a habit of taking the Lord's paintings out of the gallery, on loan, then selling them off.

The gallery's documents showing their legal entitlement to the paintings were earned for them a decision in court the first time around. Story has it that over the years, Beaverbrook's descendents have bullied the gallery management into signing documents which claim that the paintings were lenders and not keepers.

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