A portrait found in a Maine attic unexpectedly sold for $1.4M. Could it be a long-lost Rembrandt:- Auctioneer Kaja Veilleux made an unexpected find in the attic of a private estate in Camden, Maine, while on a regular house call: a painting from the 17th century of a young woman wearing a cap and ruffled collar.
In a news release, Veilleux, the founder of Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, said, “When we go to people’s homes, we often go in blind, not knowing what we’ll find.”
It was in the attic, among stacks of art, that we found this amazing picture. The house was full of beautiful things.
The painting looked like it was done in the style of the Dutch master Rembrandt, and a label on the back of the frame said it was by Rembrandt.
The paper slip, which looks like it was given out by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, also said that the picture was lent to the museum in 1970.
However, not much is known about the portrait, and many experts do not consider it to be part of Rembrandt’s work. The auction house told CNN that it thinks the label is real, but the Philadelphia Museum of Art couldn’t say for sure if it had ever borrowed the picture.
A museum representative also said in an email that “generally… a slip or label doesn’t necessarily verify a work of art—certainly more work would be required.”
Thomaston Place wouldn’t say if it talked to a Rembrandt expert about the identification, but it did put the picture on the market with a price range of $10,000 to $15,000.
In the sale papers, the portrait was called “After Rembrandt.” This style of painting is thought to be a copy of or based on the style of a well-known artist and is not an autograph.
At an auction last Saturday, bidding reached six figures after an initial offer of $32,500, more than double the high estimate. The sale included nearly a dozen suitors, some of whom called from Europe, according to Thomaston Place. Three telephone bidders remained until $900,000, then two raised the price to $1.41 million.
The auction house says this is the highest Maine auction price for an artwork. According to the figure, multiple collectors, including the victorious bidder, a “private European collector,” believe the Rembrandt is likely authentic enough to be worth the gamble.
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Lost from the records
Rembrandt historian Gary Schwartz said a buyer had asked for his opinion on the Maine portrait. “Go for it,” he told the unidentified collector, who was not the winning bidder. Art specialist told CNN the image had a “extremely large” likelihood of being by the Dutch painter.
Schwartz noted that the piece cannot be adequately judged without seeing it in person, although he cited a nearly comparable Rembrandt picture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna of a young woman in a white cap.
“The resemblance is so strong that I am amazed that people accept one and dismiss the other,” he said in a video chat from the Netherlands. He said that he was not surprised that someone paid over a million for it at auction.
Schwartz also notes that Rembrandt’s 1969 catalog included the Maine artwork. A Philadelphia collector owns the painting, titled “Portrait of a young girl.”
The catalog’s author calls the Rembrandt attribution “doubtful,” but Schwartz thinks it’s important and that the painting was never examined because it was in private ownership and inaccessible to experts.
“When paintings fall out of interest, they just disappear into dark space,” said Schwartz, who released a 2022 book suggesting that “Rembrandt in a Red Beret” is a self-portrait.
A matter of opinion
With no clear authority on attribution, the prominent Rembrandt Research Project closed in 2014 (Schwartz believes it never studied the Maine portrait). Over the past century, academics have reattributed hundreds of Rembrandt paintings to disciples or degraded them to “after Rembrandt” status.
However, a prominent catalog or auction house endorsement can boost a painting’s worth manyfold. For instance, Christie’s evaluated “The Adoration of the Kings” at $17,000 in 2021, but Sotheby’s sold it for roughly $13.8 million last year after new study proved it was an original Rembrandt.
“The great thing, really, would be to go to Vienna with this painting, hold it up there (next to the similar portrait) and have a discussion with a few experts,” Schwartz said. “It (was painted) on panel, so you can date it, and very often the wood is from the same slabs as other Rembrandt workshop paintings.”