Why this is a loan and not a rental

Three arrangements that look alike

From the sofa they are the same thing. A painting you did not buy is hanging on your wall and money leaves your account every month. Underneath they are three different arrangements, and Dutch has a separate word for each.

Huur, rent. You pay for the use of something. At the end of it the object goes back and it was the owner's the whole time. Nothing you paid was ever pointed at owning it.

Huurkoop, hire purchase. You pay in instalments towards owning one specific object, over an agreed term, and at the end it is yours. The object is chosen at the start and the term is the thing you are committed to.

Bruikleen, a loan. You have the use of something that stays somebody else's. There is no term running towards ownership and no instalment plan. If ownership changes hands it is because you bought it, as a separate transaction, at the price it carries that day.

The Idolaters is the third one. The loan terms say it in one line: the painting is lent to you, not sold and not rented towards ownership. This article is about what that means when it is your wall; the binding version of all of it is the loan terms.

The comparison, line by line

Two rows carry the argument. Do payments buy the object is the legal difference, and can you buy it is the one that turns out to matter on a wall.

What that changes for you in practice

Four things follow from the painting not being yours, and three of them are in your favour.

You do not insure it. The studio insures the works it lends out. While a painting is with you it is not covered by your own household insurance and it does not need to be, so there is nothing to arrange and nothing to declare. Ordinary traces of hanging are the studio's concern and cost you nothing.

Nobody can take it. Because it stays the property of the studio it cannot be sold, pledged, lent on, or taken by anyone else's creditors. That is a sentence people skim past, and it is the one that makes a loan a loan.

There is nothing to sit out. No twelve, twenty-four or thirty-six month term. You can end the membership before any Switch Day, the work goes back on that day by the route it came, and the deposit comes back within fourteen days of the last work returning undamaged. What you already paid for a quarter that has started is not refunded. There is also a statutory fourteen days to withdraw from the whole thing at the start.

And carelessness is yours. Damage or loss through carelessness, or through breaking the rules about where it may hang, is at your cost, up to the value shown on the work's page on the day it happened, and the deposit is what it comes off first. Theft and fire are insured, provided you report them.

The part people are actually searching for

The query that brings most people here is renting a painting with an option to buy. Here the option is not a clause you negotiate. It is the default, and it is exclusive.

While a work hangs with you, you are the only person who can buy it. Not another member, not a visitor to the shop, nobody. That holds for as long as it hangs there. Works standing in the studio are for sale to anyone, which is the normal state of everything in the shop.

So a quarter is not only three months of looking at a painting. It is three months in which that painting is off the market for everybody except you.

What you paid comes off. Membership over your last four quarters comes off the price, and the deposit may come off as well. The price itself is whatever the work's page says on the day you decide, for you and for everybody else, and it moves over time.

The credit is not tied to that one painting. This is the part that is genuinely unlike hire purchase. Your credit can go towards the work hanging in your home, or towards any other work that is for sale. Four quarters of living with four paintings can end in buying the fifth one you saw in the studio.

And one thing that runs the other way, for members only: new work is shown to members before it goes into the shop, so a member can buy it before anyone else can.

What you may and may not do with it

Short list, and it is short on purpose.

Yes. Hang it, live with it, photograph it in your own home and show those photographs. That is the point of the whole arrangement and there is nothing careful about it.

No. Lending it on, selling it, using the image commercially, reproducing it in any form, or presenting yourself as its owner. Membership is personal and does not transfer to somebody else.

And it hangs where you said it would. Indoors, at the address on file, on a wall that can carry it, out of direct sunlight and away from radiators. If you move, the studio hears about it before the painting does. If it is to hang anywhere other than your home, ask first. The same care that any oil painting wants is in sunlight, radiators and the walls to avoid.

None of that is unusual for a loan. It is the ordinary shape of having somebody else's painting in your house, written down so that neither of us has to remember it.

What the arrangement costs, and how it sits next to the Dutch lending libraries, is in renting art in the Netherlands. The membership itself is on The Idolaters.

Questions people ask

Is The Idolaters renting a painting, or something else?

It is a loan. The painting is lent to you, not sold and not rented towards ownership, and it stays the property of the studio until you buy it. Nothing you pay is an instalment towards owning it, and there is no term to sit out: you can end the membership before any Switch Day.

Can I buy the painting that is hanging in my house?

Yes, and while it hangs with you, you are the only one who can. Not another member and not a visitor to the shop. What you paid in membership over your last four quarters comes off the price, and the deposit may come off as well. The price is the one on the work's page on the day you decide.

Do I have to buy it in the end?

No. Nothing you pay is an instalment and there is no point at which ownership passes by itself. A work cannot be kept beyond its quarter, so if you do not want to give it back you buy it, and if you do give it back another one takes its place. Ending the membership costs nothing beyond the quarter you are in.

Do I need to insure a painting on loan?

No. The studio insures the works it lends out, and while a painting is with you it is not covered by your own household insurance and does not need to be. Ordinary traces of hanging cost you nothing. Damage through carelessness is yours, up to the value on the work's page, and the deposit comes off that first.

Can I put the credit towards a different painting?

Yes. The credit from your last four quarters can go towards the work hanging in your home or towards any other work that is for sale. That is one of the real differences from hire purchase, where the money is tied to the one object from the start.