The Baron and the gallery

A Polish baron who is laying claim to the Dulwich Picture Gallery's £250million collection of Old Masters has been invited to take a VIP tour of the paintings in the hope that he will drop his demand.

Baron Vladimir Reisky de Dubnic, great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of the last King of Poland, has written to the director of the gallery in south London, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, claiming ownership of 180 paintings - including several Rubens, three Rembrandts and two Canalettos.

By anyone's standards, however, his argument appears to be on rather shaky ground.

The paintings were originally purchased in the 1790s by Noel Desenfans and Sir Francis Bourgeois - London art dealers commissioned by King Stanislaw II to build a royal collection that would "encourage the progress of fine arts in Poland". But in 1795 the King was deposed and his country divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria.

The collection, put together at a cost to the dealers of £9,000, never left London. Instead, it remained the property of Desenfans and Sir Francis, who bequeathed the paintings to Dulwich College. On Sir Fran-cis's death in 1811, Dulwich Picture Gallery was founded as a permanent home for the collection. In short, the paintings never came into the possession of the Polish royal family. But, apparently straight-faced, the baron is demanding that the original deal should be honoured - more than 200 years after it was struck - and has offered £9,000 for the "return" of the priceless collection.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, Mr Shawe-Taylor sees the claim as "rather cheeky and optimistic". He has responded not with a lawyer's letter but with an invitation to a "red carpet" welcome and tour.

A gallery spokeswoman said: "All galleries have to take claims like this seriously, but we are hoping that Baron Vladimir will realise we are on firm ground and that he does not really have a claim to the paintings. We cannot see this going much further and we do not want to get bitter about it, so when the baron next visits this country we are offering him a tour of the gallery, with the full red carpet treatment. He will be able to see what a fine collection we have here - and what he has missed out on."

However, the baron, 77, may have other ideas. He grew up in what is now the Czech Republic, where his family established its new seat after exile from Poland, before fleeing communism in 1948.

Following the collapse of the regime, the baron returned and successfully reclaimed several family estates from the Czech government, including a 12th century castle in Vilemov, near Prague.

His son, John Reisky, who lives and works in south London, said his father is unlikely to drop the claim without a fight. He said: "The fact that this deal between the king and the art dealers took place is not in doubt.

"What my father has to establish, which is probably a long shot, is that a payment was made to consolidate the deal. That is going to be difficult because we have to find documentation from 200 years ago.

"However, he has had some success in reclaiming property in the Czech Republic and I think he will stick with this claim. My family lost quite a lot of property in the war and while some of it has been given back, it is a big blow to lose things like these paintings."