THOMASTON, ME — The second session of the three-day sale at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries on August 23-25 was dominated by the seven-figure performance of a portrait in the manner of Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669). Cataloged as ‘after’ the Dutch master and estimated at $10,000-$15,000, bidding climbed to $1,175,000 ($1,468,750 with buyer’s premium).
The bust-length portrait of a young girl in well-to-do period attire is painted on a cradled oak panel measuring 20 by 16in and housed in a period Dutch gilt wood frame. It purports to date from the early 1630s, shortly after Rembrandt moved from his native Leiden to the city of Amsterdam. From 1632 to 1635, he oversaw the activities of art dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh’s busy studio, fulfilling dozens of similar portrait commissions, some of them with the aid of assistants. As the names of the sitters were seldom recorded, the identities of many subjects from this period are unknown.
A clue to the earlier provenance of this Maine picture is provided by a gallery label for a 1970 exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where the lender is listed as Cary Bok of Camden, Maine. He was the grandson of Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis (1850-1933), the founder the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia that once sold bestsellers such as Ladies Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post, The American Home and Country Gentleman. Cyrus Curtis remains high on the list of the richest-ever Americans and is the sort of man who could have afforded to buy a genuine Rembrandt portrait in the 1920s when prices over $100,000 were not unusual.
Bidding for the portrait, that came for sale from a Camden, Maine estate, opened well above the estimate at $32,500 and from $200,000, accelerated quickly in increments of $25,000. According to Carol Achterhof, a representative of the house, there were nine telephone bidders, plus two serious live bidders in the room. The painting sold to a UK buyer.
Clearly, those bidders saw enough technical excellence to believe it is an autograph work. However, key to the future of this painting will be the opinion of the extensive academic and scientific research that now greets any painting connected with the Rembrandt oeuvre. A positive attribution could yet make the hammer price modest.
