A portrait found in a Maine attic unexpectedly sold for $1.4M. Could it be a long-lost Rembrandt?

(CNN) — During a routine house call to a private estate in Camden, Maine, auctioneer Kaja Veilleux made an unexpected discovery in the property’s attic: A 17th-century painting of a young woman wearing a cap and ruffled collar.

“On house calls, we often go in blind, not knowing what we’ll find,” said Veilleux, the founder of Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, in a press release. “The home was filled with wonderful pieces, but it was in the attic, among stacks of art, that we found this remarkable portrait.”

The artwork appeared to have been painted in the style of Dutch master Rembrandt — and a label on the frame’s reverse claimed it was by him. The paper slip, which appears to have been issued by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, also suggested the painting was loaned to the museum in 1970.

Very little is known about the portrait, however, and it is not widely recognized by scholars as part of Rembrandt’s oeuvre. While the auction house told CNN it believes the label to be genuine, the Philadelphia Museum of Art was unable to confirm whether it had ever borrowed the portrait. (A museum spokesperson added, via email, that “generally… a slip or label doesn’t necessarily verify a work of art — certainly more work would be required.”)

Thomaston Place would not disclose whether it consulted a Rembrandt expert about the attribution, but it proceeded to list the painting with an estimate of just $10,000 to $15,000. The portrait was described in sale materials as “After Rembrandt,” terminology denoting that a painting is believed to be a copy of — or was modeled on — a known artist’s style, and is not an autograph work.

But not everyone, it seems, was so sure.

After an opening offer of $32,500, more than double the high estimate, bidding at an auction last Saturday soon skyrocketed into six figures. Almost a dozen potential suitors, some of whom joined via phone from Europe, participated in the sale, according to Thomaston Place. Three telephone bidders remained until $900,000, before the last two pushed the final sale price up to $1.41 million.

The auction house believes this to be the highest sum ever paid for an artwork at a Maine auction. And the figure suggests that several collectors (including the winning bidder, identified only as a “private European collector”) believe there is enough chance that it is a genuine Rembrandt to be worth the gamble.

Lost from the records

Rembrandt scholar Gary Schwartz said a potential buyer had earlier sought his opinion on the Maine portrait. He advised the unidentified collector (who was not the winning bidder) to “go for it,” he said. The art historian told CNN he believes there is an “extremely large” chance the portrait was painted by the Dutch master.

While Schwartz stressed it is impossible to properly judge the work without seeing it in person, he pointed to a strikingly similar Rembrandt portrait, also depicting a young woman in a white cap, at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

“The resemblance … is so strong that I am amazed that people accept one and simply dismiss the other,” he said on a video call from his home in the Netherlands, adding that he is “not surprised that somebody paid (over) a million when it came up to auction.”

Schwartz also points out that the Maine artwork featured in a catalog of Rembrandt’s work as recently as 1969. Listed under the title “Portrait of a young girl,” the painting is described as belonging to a private collector in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Although the catalog’s author notes that the attribution to Rembrandt is “doubtful,” Schwartz believes its inclusion is significant — and that the painting was simply never researched, as it was in private hands and inaccessible to scholars.

“When paintings fall out of interest, they just disappear into dark space,” said Schwartz, who published a 2022 book arguing that another downgraded painting, “Rembrandt in a Red Beret,” is in fact a genuine self-portrait.

Art historian Volker Manuth, who authored publisher Taschen’s 2019 monograph “Rembrandt: The Complete Paintings,” told CNN he was also approached by a potential buyer of the Maine portrait. He had only encountered it as a “poor black-and-white reproduction” in the aforementioned 1969 catalog, adding via email that he has “more doubts about the attribution to Rembrandt than not” (though he, too, stressed that attributions “should not be given without a thorough investigation of the original painting”).

“The price paid… might indicate that somebody has hopes that the cleaning of the rather dirty painting might turn it into a portrait with the qualities attributed to Rembrandt,” added Manuth, who is an art history professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands. “This happens more and more often. I would not be surprised to (see) the painting back on the market soon as ‘Rembrandt.’”

A matter of opinion

There is no single authority on questions of attribution, and the influential Rembrandt Research Project ceased operations in 2014 (having not, in Schwartz’s view, ever considered the Maine portrait). Over the past century, the number of paintings broadly accepted by scholars as genuine Rembrandts has fallen dramatically, with hundreds reattributed to followers or otherwise downgraded to “after Rembrandt” status.

But inclusion in a major catalog, or the backing of a big auction house, can increase a painting’s value manyfold. Take “The Adoration of the Kings,” which was valued at just $17,000 by Christie’s in 2021 but sold for almost $13.8 million last year after new research led Sotheby’s to declare it an authentic Rembrandt, not the work of an artist associated with him.

Schwartz suggested that, should the Maine portrait receive similar endorsement, it might be revalued at up to $5 million. Speaking to the New York Times, authentication expert Mark Winter meanwhile estimated a figure “in the area of $15 million.”

In either case, the painting may, one day, be worth significantly more than the amount paid at the Thomaston Place auction. Though this may only transpire if the portrait’s new owner invites scholars to inspect it.

“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, adding. “It (was painted) on panel, so you can date the panel, and very often you find that the wood is from the same slabs that have been used by other paintings form the Rembrandt workshop.”

“Nobody should express a definitive opinion without studying the object,” Schwartz said.

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