An unsigned painting in the style of Rembrandt was sold for $1.5 million at the Thomaston Place Auction Galleries in Maine.
Titled ‘Portrait of a Girl’, the painting features a young woman in black attire. The details associated with the painting date it to the 1630s, a period when Rembrandt van Rijn was exclusively working on commissions for a studio in Amsterdam. However, a sticker at the back of the painting suggests that it was once loaned to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it was attributed to the Old Master himself. It was noticed by Kaja Veillux, founder of the Thomaston Galleries, in the attic of the estate of someone he once visited.
Due to its dubious provenance, the painting arrived on the auction block with a low estimate of $10,000. However, it soon proved to be an underestimation as the bidding itself opened with $32,500. A bidding war ensued until the work was sold to an anonymous buyer in the UK for $1.5 million.
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Rembrandt paintings have always fetched top dollar at auctions. The most expensive work by the artist – titled Portrait of a man with arms akimbo (1658) – was sold by Christie’s in 2009 for $33.3 million. The previous record holder was again sold by Christie’s in 2000 for $28.8 million. The frenzy behind this latest work of dubious origins could also be explained by the auction of two Rembrandt works last year. Collectively sold for $14 million, they were said to be the last works by the artists in a private collection; so the emergence of a possibly new work naturally gravitated purveyors.
