Rembrandt Coming to Auction

Back on September 10th I posted about quality art finding its way back to the major international auction houses.  That post was on 17th-century Italian artist Domenichino and a large painting entitled “St. John the Evangelist”. Christies' has the consignment, and the estimate is $16.5 million. To read the post, click HERE.

High quality and unique items have not been seen much over the past year at the large international auction houses, at least not in thee quantities prior to the economic concerns.  Perhaps there is now a more accepting mood on the part of consignors, or the realization that quality will bring acceptable bidding no matter the economic realities.

The London Times is reporting that Chrisites has announced it wil be offering a Rembrandt in its December old masters sale.  The estimate is between $29.7 million and $41 million.The auction record for a Rembrandt is just about the low estimate of this painting, so expectations are high.

The London Times state:

Portrait of a man, half-length, with his arms akimbo has a price estimate of £18-£25 million, the highest placed on an Old Master work.

It is a bold statement of intent at a time when much of the headline-grabbing fizz has gone out of the art market but Paul Raison, head of Old Masters at Christie’s in London, said that the auction house was “very confident about our market”.

The world record for an Old Master at auction was set at Sotheby’s in 2002 when bidding on Peter Paul Rubens’s The Massacre of the Innocents raced away from the estimate of £4-6m to sell for an eventual £49,506,648. The nearest price realised before or since is £20,489,143 for a Turner in 2006. The most raised by a Rembrandt is £19,800,000.

As in the recession of the early 1990s, art collectors have forsaken the more fashionable periods (Impressionists back then, Modern and Contemporary now) and sought refuge in the reassuring Old Masters sector, Mr Raison said.

 To read the full article, click HERE.