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Two paintings by Rembrandt that were "extremely rare" and had never been seen before have been found in a family's private collection. The paintings by the Dutch master from the 17th century, whose works often sell at sale for millions of dollars, have never been shown to the public. They were found by experts from Christie's when they were doing a regular appraisal. Jan Willemsz van der Pluym and Jaapgen Carels, an old married pair from the Dutch city of Leiden, are pictured in the eight-inch paintings. The paintings were made in 1635. Henry Pettifer, Christie's international assistant chair of Old Master paintings, told the Financial Times, "I didn't know what I was going to see." "I let myself dream. But I thought it was strange that the pictures had never been looked at. They were not mentioned at all in anything Rembrandt wrote." The works are believed to be worth between $6.26 million and $10 million (£5 million and £8 million). On July 6, they will be sold at Christie's in London after being shown in New York and Amsterdam. This is the second time Christie's will be in charge of selling the paintings. In 1824, the auction house sold the oil paintings to ancestors of the UK family.
Rembrandt was related to Van der Pluym and Carels through their son Dominicus, who married Rembrandt's uncle's daughter. Christie's said that there was enough knowledge about where the paintings came from to suggest that they were real Rembrandts. Pictures were also sent to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for its own technical and historical study, which, according to the auction house, led to "the same conclusion." Rembrandt is not going to set a new standard at auction with these portraits. Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo (1658), which sold for $33.2 million in 2009, was his most expensive painting. This price wasn't too far from the $25.8 million that Saint James the Greater (1661), another religious scene by Rembrandt, sold for at auction in 2007. Paintings by Rembrandt and many other Old Masters are often sold for even more money outside of public salesrooms, though. In 2016, Christie's helped a private deal to buy rare pendant paintings of the Dutch couple Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit for €80 million ($96 million) each. The portraits were of Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit. The eye-popping amounts were paid for by the Dutch and French governments, which were working for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Louvre in Paris, respectively.
Selena Mattei
