Prince Felix Yusupov sold two Rembrandts to Joseph Widener with a buy-back option, raised the money, and lost them in court

Felix Yusupov became heir in 1908 to one of the largest fortunes in Russia. In December 1916 he and others killed Grigori Rasputin in the family's Moika Palace in Petrograd. After the revolution he went back to the palace, took jewels and two Rembrandt portraits, and left Russia in 1919 on the British warship HMS Marlborough. The palace was nationalised and its art went largely to the Hermitage and other museums. On 12 August 1921 in London he sold the two Rembrandts to Joseph E. Widener of Philadelphia for £100,000. The contract let him buy them back by 1 January 1924 for the same sum plus 8% interest, but only if he was again in a position to "keep and personally enjoy" them. In December 1923 he tendered about $520,334. He had borrowed it from Calouste Gulbenkian, who held the paintings as security and could sell them on default. Widener refused the money. Yusupov sued in New York and lost. On 20 July 1927 the New York Court of Appeals held the deal was a sale, not a loan, the price was fair, and the pledge to Gulbenkian meant Yusupov could not keep the paintings himself. In 1934 an English court awarded him £25,000 in a libel case against MGM over a Rasputin film. He died in Paris in 1967 and is buried at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. In 2026 both Rembrandts are in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and the Moika Palace is a museum and educators' centre.