The UK culture minister has delayed issuing an export license on Rembrandt’s Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet (1657), which has been in the UK for over 250 years but was recently sold to a foreign buyer for £35m. The painting is particularly popular with the public because Hooghsaet, a wealthy Amsterdam woman, is shown with her pet parrot—who was named in her will—not her estranged husband.
Earlier this year, the Rembrandt was sold by the Douglas-Pennant family, whose home is Penrhyn Castle, a National Trust mansion in north Wales. The portrait had hung there since 1860.
