Rare $20 Million Rembrandt Self-Portrait at Auction

Almost all of Rembrandt Van Rijn’s painted self-portraits are now in major museum collections, and only three remain in private hands. One of these was sold at Sotheby’s in London in 2003, one is on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Scotland, and the third – the oldest of the three – is to be offered with an estimate of $15-20 million at Sotheby’s in London on July 28. 

The work, Self-portrait, wearing a ruff and black hat, is believed to have been painted at the end of 1632, when the Dutch master was 26. This conclusion has been made in part because of the signature's style, which Rembrandt only briefly used. Additionally, dendrochronological analysis (tree-ring dating) done on the panel that the work is painted on has revealed that the panel was cut from the same Baltic oak tree Rembrandt used to paint The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp: a 1632 masterpiece, which is in the collection at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. This was a pivotal moment in young Rembrandt’s career, when he was just establishing himself in Amsterdam and enjoying new-found commercial success.

Rembrandt produced around 80 self-portraits throughout his lifetime. He returned to the theme time and time again, and they are today amongst his most celebrated works. 

“Rembrandt’s face is instantly recognizable to us at every stage of his adulthood – far more so than any other painter," said George Gordon, Sotheby’s Co-chairman of Old Master Paintings Worldwide. "In each self-portrait he reveals as much of himself as he chooses to, but always in his unique fluency in the handling of paint,”

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The painting was first sold in Paris in January 1891 to Henry Robert Brand 2nd Viscount Hampden. A descendant sold it to J.O. Leegenhoek, from Paris, in a Sotheby’s auction in 1970 for £650. Leegenhoek’s wife later sold it to a private collector, who sold it to Noortman Master Paintings in Maastricht, the Netherlands. It was then sold to the current owner in September 2005.

The auction on July 28 will be Sotheby’s first live sale in London since government-mandated closures in response to Covid-19. It is also the first time the auction is to offer Old Master works, contemporary, Impressionist, modern and British works all within one live, evening sale. 

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“With rapidly accelerating numbers of people transacting with Sotheby’s for the first time, most with no pre-conceptions about established sale formats, there has never been a better time to shake things up and bring together the best of what Sotheby’s has to offer in the Fine Arts in a new way,” commented Helena Newman, Chairman for Sotheby’s Europe and Global Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Department.

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