The Leiden Collection Acquires "Man with a Plumed Red Beret" at TEFAF

Thomas Kaplan's Leiden Collection — the world's foremost private collection of Rembrandt and Rembrandt School paintings — acquired Willem Drost's exceptional 1654 oil on canvas "Man with a Plumed Red Beret" at TEFAF Maastricht through Agnews Gallery. The acquisition was described as a "capstone acquisition" by founder Thomas Kaplan. The painting, long admired by collectors and scholars, enjoys a distinguished provenance passing through the Rothschild family and was recovered by the Monuments Men after being stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

• The painting was sold by Swiss financier Jacqui Safra, who had acquired it from the Rothschild family in the 1990s

• It was stolen by the Nazis during WWII, destined for Hitler's Führer Museum in Linz, Austria

• Recovered by the American Monuments Men from the salt mines of Altaussee in 1945 — famously photographed being carried to safety alongside Vermeer's "The Art of Painting"

• The work is a tronie — a depiction of a figure in exaggerated dress or pose — the largest group of surviving Rembrandtesque works by Drost

• Scholar Jonathan Bikker notes Drost demonstrates a command of the "rough manner" indistinguishable from Rembrandt's own work of the mid-1650s