The battle between the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and the British Beaverbrook Foundation has focused on 133 paintings. (CBC)

The Beaverbrook Art Gallery and the British Beaverbrook Foundation want to bring their legal dispute to an end.

The two sides have agreed to negotiate a deal to settle their battle over 133 valuable paintings in the Fredericton gallery.

The legal fight was expected to go to court Thursday in Saint John, N.B. The hearing has been postponed, the third time this has happened since last winter.

Lawyers for both sides described the postponement as indefinite.

"I can confirm that the gallery and the trustees of the U.K. foundation have agreed to adjourn indefinitely," gallery lawyer David Young wrote in an e-mail.

"They are working co-operatively to find a way to put an end to the dispute. There is really nothing more to that I can add at this time — it would not be helpful to the process to say more."

Ken McCullogh, the Saint John lawyer for the foundation, used similar language in an e-mail.

"The hearing has been adjourned indefinitely, and the parties are working co-operatively to bring the dispute to an end," he wrote. "It would not be helpful to the process to say any more at this time."

The 133 works in question have been in the Fredericton gallery since Lord Beaverbrook opened it in 1959, five years before he died.

The foundation, controlled by Beaverbrook's descendants, has argued the works have been on loan.

An arbitrator saw it differently, ruling in 2007 that 85 of the works — including the most important and valuable — were gifts to the gallery. An arbitration appeal panel upheld that decision last year.

The British Beaverbrook Foundation wanted to take its case to the New Brunswick Court of Queen's Bench, but that changed with the Wednesday postponement.

The foundation has suffered money problems after spending millions of dollars in legal bills on the case. In recent weeks, it has been forced to put Cherkley Court, Lord Beaverbrook's country estate, up for sale.