Since it seemed to be a knockoff of a 17th century Rembrandt, the auction house priced the portrait at $3,100 and nothing more. When a British buyer agreed to pay 1,500 times more than that, he was completely aware of his actions. An amount of four and a half million was paid for the Rembrandt Laughing in an English auction house which experts confirmed to have been a self portrait done by the Dutch master depicted with his head tilted back in easygoing laughter.
A piece like this one could have easily raked in $30 to $40 million according to a collector who specializes in Dutch and Flemish masters and for him the price given at the auction was rather disappointing. Changing the value of the painting was not something that the art expert from Sotheby's agreed to do. It is not every day that a work of Rembrandt comes on the market and so this sale in particular is a rare opportunity.
Around 1628 was when Rembrandt made this self portrait while he was in his early 20s in his hometown of Leiden. It was his experimentation with expressions that made him use a mirror and his face at a time when he was already making a name for himself as an artist. A staggering presence is what it has. When it comes to the laughter and the light, both were in their most natural form.
This painting was held by an English family for more than 100 years. There have been assumptions that it could have been Rembrandt's imitator or one of his students. When the auction house provided a low evaluation, it may have been because of some poor photographs that showed only a little of the painting's luminosity or depth. In the little work of art, everything from the contour to the brush strokes, monogram, and materials pointed to Rembrandt and this was shown in a 23 page analysis.
Considering that the painting was a genuine Rembrandt from the monogram RHL, the winner of the auction may have suspected this after recognizing the rare style that was used by the artist for a year. For the monogram, it meant Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden. For its assessment the auction house recorded the signature HL. More convincing are these initials for they were painted onto the background and the direction of the brush strokes match another one of Rembrandt's monograms.
The shape of the body of the laughing Rembrandt ended up baffling the experts. Other than a woolly blanket for clothing, it lay in lumpy folds, the metal armor and glossy shirt appear amorphous, and there was a limited definition when it came to the anatomy underneath. But there is a distinct contour which he also used in his later works. This contour possessed a certain autonomy and it has been said that Rembrandt may have been experimenting with this way of painting the body.
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. The whereabouts of the painting remained unknown before 1800 and a Flemish engraver attributed the original to the Dutch painter Frans Hals by mistake when he made a reproductive print not recognizing that the image bore the face of Rembrandt. No one knew where it stayed afterwards because of the silence that followed.
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