Morning:
14°c
A Rembrandt masterpiece unseen in public for nearly 40 years is on course to break auction records.
The portrait of an unknown man from late in the 17th-century Dutch artist's career is expected to make between £18 million and £25 million.
If it makes the higher estimate, it would set a record price for the artist and become the second most valuable Old Master painting of all time.
It is the latest addition to Christie's December sale which already includes a Baroque painting by Domenico Zampieri, with an estimate of up to
£10 million.
Paul Raison, head of the auctioneer's Old Masters department in London, said the Rembrandt was “truly remarkable” and the auction would be a “landmark” in the history of the European
art market.
“You find good pictures or great pictures popping up but it's unusual and really amazing to have two of museum quality in one sale. It shows the confidence that there is in the Old
Masters market,” he said.
The Rembrandt, entitled Portrait of a Man, half-length, with his arms akimbo, was painted in 1658, a year from which only one other work by the artist is known, a three-quarter length self-portrait now in New York's Frick Museum.
In 1658 Rembrandt was forced to sell his house in Amsterdam and move to a smaller studio two years after he was declared bankrupt.
The portrait is in the characteristic style of his later works, with bold strokes and what critics praise as a masterful rendition of colour and light.
The sitter is unknown but the work was formerly referred to as Portrait of an Admiral because of his costume.
Nothing is known of the work before 1847 when it was shown in an exhibition in London.
It was then sold in the capital in 1930 for £18,500 and subsequently acquired privately by George Huntington Hartford II.
He inherited what was said to be the world's greatest fortune in 1932 because of his father and grandfather's American empire of 16,000 shops.
He gave the picture to Columbia University in New York in 1958. It survived protests in 1968 when students agreed to allow it to be removed for safekeeping from offices they had stormed.
In 1974, the university sold it to a private
collection where it has stayed until now.
The current record for a Rembrandt is Portrait of a Lady, Aged 62 which sold in 2000 for £19.8 million.
The world record for an Old Master is the £49.5 million paid for Peter Paul Rubens's Massacre of the Innocents in 2002 — from a much lower estimate.
