Lawyers for the Beaverbrook Gallery in Fredericton are depending on thousands of historical documents to make the case that 133 valuable paintings belong to the people of New Brunswick, and not the British-based foundation that is claiming them.

The paintings are worth millions of dollars, and include important works by British landscape artist J.M.W. Turner and by Lucian Freud, grandson of the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.  

Retired Supreme Court Justice Peter Cory has set aside five weeks for an arbitration hearing, which began Tuesday in Fredericton, on the dispute between the gallery and the U.K. Beaverbrook Foundation. 

The process will ultimately resolve the high-profile battle, which has raged for years in the media and the courts on both sides of the Atlantic. The gallery insists the paintings were gifts from British newspaper baron Max Aitken, who became Lord Beaverbrook, but the foundation, which represents Aitken's descendants, claims the paintings were merely on loan. 

Gallery lawyers spent much of the first day of the hearing reading old newspaper articles, and letters between Lord Beaverbrook and the gallery, submitting three volumes of reference material for Cory's perusal. 

The gallery opened in 1959, and Beaverbrook purchased the paintings at stake in the dispute both before and after that date.

Judy Budovitch, a member of the gallery's board of directors, says with few witnesses left to testify about Lord Beaverbrook's intent, the documents will help determine the outcome of the hearing.

"It's the documents we have to rely on, because so many of the people of that era are no longer with us," she said Tuesday. "So it is the materials we have to look to now to try to piece together what, in fact, was the reality in 1959 and '60."

Sitting in on the hearing was like taking a history lesson. Some of the documents read date back to 1950 and include transcripts from the gallery's opening in September 1959.

Gallery director Bernard Riordon says they will indicate who the paintings really belong to. "That's critically important, in terms of, these artworks are the legacy of Lord Beaverbrook and very important to all citizens of New Brunswick."

The foundation is expected to begin laying out its case for ownership of the paintings next week.

The arbitration will settle one of two parallel disputes involving paintings at the gallery. There are two Beaverbrook foundations — one British, one Canadian. Both claim ownership of different groups of paintings at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and both are represented by Beaverbrook's descendants.

The Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation is pursuing its claim of approximately 50 paintings in a lawsuit before the courts.