A family discovered they had two Rembrandt portraits worth millions of dollars

2023-05-16 05:35:00

From portraits by Rembrandtwhich had never been exhibited before and were even unknown for the researchers of ancient masters, were found in the collection of a UK family when specialists from Christie’s auction house carried out a routine assessment.

“I wasn’t aware of what I was going to see,” said Henry Pettifer, international vice president of old master paintings at the auction house when he found the Rembrandt portraits in a private collection of a family in the United Kingdom, following being summoned for a routine valuation, the agency reported. telam.

The Rembrandt painting that Holland lost to recover for its heritage

The specialist described as “extraordinary” that these pieces were absent in the studies of work of the 17th century Dutch masteraccording to what was quoted by the newspaper Financial Times.

The portraits, Dating from 1635, they will go on sale at Christie’s in London on July 6, following showings in New York and Amsterdam, with an estimated value for the two pieces between 6 and 10 million dollars.

How they got the Rembrandt paintings

Generations ago, the family, whose identity was not disclosed by Christie’s, he bought the pair of small-scale oil paintings in 1824, at auction from the same house.

After analyzing the portraits and making a investigation that showed a line of provenance “practically uninterrupted“Dating back to the models they commissioned from Rembrandt, Christie’s considered the paintings to be the genuine article.

The auctioneer sent the images for analysis to experts at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, a global Rembrandt scholarship center, who agreed with the diagnosis and awarded the paintings to the Dutch painter.

On September 13, 1975, a man cut Rembrandt’s painting “The Night Watch” with a knife.

Who are the people in the Rembrandt portraits

The portraits represent Jan Willemsz van der Pluym and his wife Jaapgen Carelsa couple with family connections to the artist.

Van der Pluym, who made his fortune from plumbing, was a prominent figure in Leiden. His son Dominicus married the daughter of Rembrandt’s uncle. And the year the portraits were painted, they bought a garden next to Rembrandt’s mother’s.

Rembrandt auction record set in 2009when the portrait “Man with arms on hips” sold for 20.2 million pounds sterling at Christie’s, within the framework of a market, the one related to the auctions of old masters, which is in decline in relation to contemporaries, since in the last year for the house the paintings of old masters represented only 7%.

“The challenge is to offer really great paints that, by virtue of our category, are very rare right now… The market is selective but it’s very strong for the right material,” Pettifer said.

ED

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