THE DIRECTOR of the Wallace Collection was honoured yesterday by the Dutch art scholars who say that five of the London museum's six 'Rembrandts' were not painted by the seventeenth-century master.
In a ceremony at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to mark the completion of the third volume of A Cor-pus of Rembrandt Paintings, the monumental study by the Rembrandt Research Project, Professor Josua Bruyn of the RPP presented John Ingamells with the first copy. He praised him for his 'open-mindedness' and for assisting the RRP 'so thoroughly'.
News of the RRP's latest deattributions in the new volume, reported in The Independent yesterday, was greeted with scepticism by some leading academics. The reattribution of the Duke of Westminster's two 'Rembrandt' portraits to Carel Fabritius was doubted by Christopher Brown, keeper of Dutch paintings at the National Gallery and author of the standard work on Fabritius. 'There is nothing in the known work of Fabritius to suggest that he could have painted the Westminster portraits,' he said. 'I think they're by Rem-brandt.'
However, Professor Bruyn said after the ceremony: 'We are confident we are right.'
Meanwhile, in the nearby Western Church of Amsterdam, excavations in search of Rembrandt's grave continue - perhaps to see if he is turning in it.
