Two exceptionally rare Rembrandt portraits long forgotten by scholars of the Dutch master have been rediscovered after almost two centuries by a British auctioneer, who stumbled upon the works during a routine valuation of a family’s private art collection.
“The pictures were completely absent from the Rembrandt literature in the 19th and 20th centuries, which was extraordinary,” Henry Pettifer, an expert in Old Masters at Christie’s auction house, said in announcing the find Monday. “They have intimacy about them, a dignity. They’re extraordinary.”
The original paintings were last seen by the public in 1824, the year they were sold to the ancestors of their current owners, who Christie’s said were unaware that both were confirmed originals.
“The family liked the pictures but were never certain that they were by Rembrandt and never really looked into that,” Pettifer said. “They have been quietly sitting in this collection, effectively hidden away from any attention at all.”
Only a single reference to either of the pair could be found in the past two centuries — an overlooked photograph in a Dutch library that someone had labeled “copy.”
Once Pettifer unearthed the portraits during the pandemic, Christie’s sent them to be examined and verified or discredited by Rembrandt experts at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. Casper van der Kruit, a spokesperson for the museum, said in an email Monday that “the Rijksmuseum conducted material-technical and art-historical research and came to the same conclusion.”
The paintings are relatively small in scale: less than 8 inches tall and 6½ inches wide, which makes them among the smallest of Rembrandt’s known portraits. “They’re unlike some of his grand, formal commissioned portraits, and they are something much more spontaneous and intimate. I think the reason for that is that the sitters were very closely connected to Rembrandt,” Pettifer said.
“They were very much from Rembrandt’s own inner circle,” he added. “We should regard them as personal documents rather than formal commissions.”
After a tour in New York and Amsterdam in June, the portraits will return to London for display and auction. Pettifer said the pair is expected to fetch an estimated $6.25 million to $10 million.
The paintings depict husband Jan Willemsz van der Pluym (1565-1644) and wife Jaapgen Carels (1565-1640), whose son married a Rembrandt cousin. The two families were also neighbors, according to Christie’s. In the same year that they sat for Rembrandt, the couple acquired a garden next to that of the artist’s mother in Leiden.
The portraits remained in the possession of the van der Pluym family until 1760, when they passed through various art collections in Warsaw and Paris before coming into the possession of James Murray, 1st Baron Glenlyon. He put them up for sale on June 18, 1824, with a simple listing of “Rembrandt — very spirited and finely coloured.”
Rembrandt, one of the most celebrated artists of all time, was born in Leiden in 1606, the youngest of at least 10 children to a prosperous miller, according to the National Gallery of Art.
After a classical education and work as an apprentice to other painters, the young artist established his own studio by the age of 21 and quickly soared to prominence. According to the Rijksmuseum, which holds the world’s largest collection of Rembrandt works, the Dutch master honed his craft by drawing and painting portraits of family members and acquaintances.
He dominated the 17th-century art scene in Holland, known as its “Golden Age,” and achieved levels of status and acclaim unheard of among artists then. He died in Amsterdam in 1669.
correction
A previous version of this article reported the wrong death dates for Jan Willemsz van Der Pluym and his wife, Jaagpen Carels. He died in 1644, not 1640. She died in 1640, not 1644. The article has been corrected.
