Because the auction house did not see the portrait to be anything but a knockoff of a 17th century Rembrandt, the price was set at only $3,100. A British buyer ended up paying 1,500 times more than that but he was completely aware of what he was doing. It has been confirmed by experts that the Dutch master, depicted with his head tilted back in easygoing laughter, was indeed the maker of Rembrandt Laughing which was bought from an English auction house for a bargain price amounting to four and a half million.
According to one of the collectors who specializes in Dutch and Flemish masters it could have easily amounted to about $30 or $40 million and he was surprised that it did not make as much at the auction. An art expert from Sotheby's, declined to put a new value on the painting. It is not every day that a work of Rembrandt comes on the market and so this sale in particular is a rare opportunity.
It was in his hometown of Leiden where Rembrandt made this self portrait around 1628 when he was in his early 20s. As he was earning his reputation as an artist he made use of a mirror and his face in order for him to be able to capture expressions of all sorts. Unbelievable was the presence it has. Possessing the most natural quality was the light and the laughter.
One English family held on to the painting for over 100 years. People thought that it was Rembrandt's imitator or one of his students. Poor photographs may have presented little of the painting's luminosity or depth and these could have been the cause for the low evaluation from the auction house. Pointing to Rembrandt were the materials, contour, brush stroke, and monogram, all of these pointed to Rembrandt and a 23 page analysis was made to support how he was responsible for the little work.
A rare style was used by the artist lasting only a year or so and the winner of the auction might have recognized that the painting was a genuine Rembrandt from the monogram RHL. Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden was what the monogram stood for. The auction house wrote the signature as HL in its assessment. Even more convincing are these initials that are painted onto the background and possess the same directionality in brush strokes as the other monograms identified with Rembrandt.
The shape of the body of the laughing Rembrandt ended up baffling the experts. Aside from the little description of the underlying anatomy, there was a woolly blanket for clothing, it lay in lumpy folds, and the metal armor and glossy shirt appeared amorphous. What is evident in this piece is a contour which had a character of his own and he used this in his later works. When it comes to the contour there is a certain autonomy to it and this must be because Rembrandt was trying out this particular way of painting the body for the first time.
Matching the other Rembrandt paintings is the thin copper plate on which the piece is painted when it comes to the size and type. Rembrandt's paintings all have a second painting underneath and this is what the xrays have revealed for this particular painting. There was no one who knew where the painting was before 1800 and a Flemish engraver accidentally attributed the original to the Dutch painter Frans Hals when he made a reproductive print not seeing how the image bore the face of Rembrandt. With silence afterwards the painting's location again became unknown.
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