Sale Of Rembrandt's Work, A Rare Opportunity

For the portrait, a value of $3,100 was set by the auction house because they thought they had a knockoff of a 17th century Rembrandt. Buying it for 1,500 times more than that was a British buyer who apparently knew what he was doing. According to the experts the Rembrandt Laughing was a self portrait done by the Dutch master depicted with his head tilted back in easygoing laughter and it was sold for a measly four and a half million in an English auction house.

Around $30 to $40 million is the price that the artwork should have gotten at the auction and there is one collector who is rather unimpressed by how cheap the price was during the auction. When it came to putting a different value on the painting the art expert from Sotheby's declined. Considering the works of Rembrandt they only come on the market once every few years and so this sale is such a rare opportunity.

Around 1628 was when Rembrandt made this self portrait while he was in his early 20s in his hometown of Leiden. 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. Such an astonishing presence is what it has. Natural was the light as well as the laughter.

About 100 years was how long the painting had been in the possession of an English family. Some had assumed it to be by one of Rembrandt's students or a Rembrandt imitator. Considering the poor photographs that could have resulted in the presentation of little of the painting's luminosity or depth, these could have led to the low evaluation from the auction house. 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.

There was a rare style used by the artist for only a year and this may have been known by the winner of the auction when he suspected that the painting was a genuine Rembrandt from the monogram RHL. What the monogram meant was Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden. For its assessment the auction house recorded the signature HL. With regard to these initials they become even more convincing since they are painted onto the background and the brush strokes used match the directionality used by Rembrandt.

Mystifying the experts was the shape of the body of the laughing Rembrandt. There was little definition of the anatomy below other than it having a woolly blanket for clothing, lying in lumpy folds, and the metal armor and glossy shirt appearing 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. Rembrandt was probably trying out this method of painting the body for the first time for the contour has a certain autonomy to it.

Considering the size and type of the thin copper plate on which the piece is painted, it matches the other Rembrandt paintings. When it comes to the xrays, the piece has a second painting underneath and this is consistent with other paintings by Rembrandt. No one knows where the painting was before 1800 and it was the time when a Flemish engraver attributed the original to the Dutch painter Frans Hals when he made a reproductive print as he did not realize that the face in the picture was Rembrandt's. No one knew where it stayed afterwards because of the silence that followed.