Since it seemed to be a knockoff of a 17th century Rembrandt, the auction house priced the portrait at $3,100 and nothing more. He knew what he was doing when a British buyer ended up paying 1,500 times more than that. The bargain price of four and a half million was paid to an English auction house for the Rembrandt Laughing which experts have confirmed to be a self portrait from the Dutch master depicted with his head tilted back in easygoing laughter.
Rather disappointed with how much the piece was sold for in the auction was a collector who specializes in Dutch and Flemish masters for he says that it could have easily been worth $30 to $40 million. What the art expert from Sotheby's declined to do was to put a new price on the particular painting. Such a sale is a rare opportunity for coming across a work by Rembrandt does not happen as often only coming on the market every few years.
For this particular self portrait Rembrandt made it around 1628 when he was in his early 20s in his Leiden hometown. Experimenting with expressions he used a mirror and his face and this was during the time when he was already establishing himself as an artist. You could say that it has an unbelievable presence. Aside from the light, the laughter was as natural as could be.
About 100 years was how long the painting had been in the possession of an English family. People thought that it was Rembrandt's imitator or one of his students. Showing only a little of the painting's luminosity or depth, poor photographs could have been the reasons why the auction house came up with a low evaluation. There was a 23 page analysis that supports the claim that Rembrandt was indeed the creator of the art work when the brush stroke, monogram, contour, and materials all point to him.
When it comes to the winner of the auction, he might have known that the painting was a genuine Rembrandt from the monogram RHL in a rare style used by the painter for a year. What the monogram meant was Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden. Recorded by the auction house for its assessment was the signature HL. Matching the directionality used by Rembrandt inn his other monograms are these initials and because they are also painted onto the background they become even more compelling proof.
Mystifying the experts was the shape of the body of the laughing Rembrandt. What it had was little description of the anatomy underneath other than the metal armor and glossy shirt appearing amorphous, a wooly blanket was used for clothing, and it lay in lumpy folds. Yet the contour has a character of its own, one that is repeated in some of his later works. If you look at this contour, it has a certain autonomy, said the expert adding that it may have been one of the first times Rembrandt tested out this way of painting the body.
Compared to the other Rembrandt paintings, the thin copper plate on which the piece is painted matches the size and type. Underneath this painting is a second painting according to xrays and these show a similar characteristic as that of the other Rembrandt works. 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. Silence followed and what resulted as the painting being lost again.
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