How to own a Rembrandt – just a little bit of one
The Observer
|September 28, 2025
A collector plans to float his Dutch masters on the stock market, letting thousands of investors take stakes in the collection
The owner of the world's largest private collection of Dutch golden age paintings has announced he is going to sell them in an initial public offering (IPO).
The practice, known as "fractionalisation", means that multiple investors will be able to buy shares in a single painting. It means a high-value work could end up with hundreds, or even thousands of shareholders, not unlike a FTSE company.
The 220-work collection owned by billionaire investor Thomas Kaplan includes 17 paintings by the Dutch master Rembrandt, as well as work by Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen, and Franz Hals.
Kaplan has dubbed the IPO venture “Project Minerva" after his most prized painting, Rembrandt's 1635 Minerva in her Study. While the value of the entire collection is not known, that painting alone was last listed in 2004 for £34m. It would probably fetch a much higher price today.
Cette histoire est tirée de l'édition September 28, 2025 de The Observer.
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