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A portrait of a young girl possibly painted by 17th-century Dutchman Rembrandt van Rijn, found in an attic of an estate in Maine, was recently sold at auction by Thomaston Place Auction Galleries for $1.4 million.
The piece sold on Aug. 24 as part of the auction house’s Summer Grandeur event.
Gallery owner and appraiser Kaja Veilleux found the artwork on what he thought was a routine house call.
“We often go in blind on house calls, not knowing what we’ll find,” Mr. Veilleux said in a release from the auction house.
According to its lot listing, the portrait depicts a teenage girl wearing a white cap and ruffled collar, typical of the period in which the work was painted. It is contained within a hand-carved gold frame.
“I’ve been doing this for over 50 years, and I’ve had a lot of exciting finds, but it was really a wonderful thing to find such a treasure and bring it out to light so it be preserved, you know, forever now,” Mr. Veilleux told Portland, Maine-area ABC affiliate WMTW-TV.
A label on the back of the unsigned portrait showed that it had once been lent out for exhibition in 1970 to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which attributed the work to Rembrandt. The Philadelphia Museum of Art told ARTnews magazine that its 1970 label is not equivalent to proper authentication.
In the work’s lot listing, it is termed as an “after Rembrandt,” meaning that it is at least in the Dutch master’s style.
The portrait had been in the hands of a family before and after it was lent for exhibition dating back to the 1920s, Thomaston Place Auction Galleries told The Associated Press.
The auction house did not disclose the family that owned the painting, but the museum label on the back of the portrait notes its owner as Cary W. Bok of Camden, Maine, who was an heir of early 20th-century publishing magnate Cyrus Curtis, according to his 1970 AP obituary.
On Aug. 24, the auction came down to three telephone bidders, with a winning bid of $1.175 million per the portrait’s lot page, the total price being about $1.4 million once the buyer’s premium is included.
The buyer lives in the United Kingdom, according to the global auction marketplace Live Auctioneers.
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