Sleeper alert! (ctd.)
April 22 2025
Picture: Christie's
Posted by Bendor Grosvenor
In de Volkskrant, Dutch journalist Tjerk Gualtherie van Weezel reports on a court case about a possible Rembrandt sleeper first covered on AHN in October 2021. Back then, a small Adoration of the Magi panel was sold at Christie's in Amsterdam as 'Circle of Rembrandt' for €860,000. The estimate having been €10-15,000. Two years later it emerged at Sotheby's in London as 'Rembrandt', and sold for £10.9m.
As de Volkskrant reports, the consignor of the picture to Christie's Amsterdam sued Christie's for negligence. In her view, the picture was a Rembrandt, and Christie's were negligent for failing to identify it as such. The painting had been accepted as Rembrandt in the earlier 20th century, but fell out of favour by the 1980s. But Christie's won the case.
The judges did not have to adjudicate on whether the painting was indeed by Rembrandt, but whether Christie's had undertaken reasonable steps to be sure, in their view, that it was not. What emerges from the case is who saw the painting, and that none of them agreed it was by Rembrandt. From de Volkskrant (via Google Translate):
Christie's itself consulted five experts and its own team that examines old masters in 2020, the ruling shows. They were all dismissive. "The way in which the figures in the painting are composed is atypical for Rembrandt," wrote the late Rembrandt expert Ernst van de Wetering, adding that he had decided to no longer make attributions.
Other scholars who shared Ernst van de Wetering's view include Gregor Weber, then head of visual arts at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, David de Witt of the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, Christiaan Vogelaar of Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden, and the art historian Jaco Rutgers.
Vogelaar was cited in the Christie's catalogue, mentioning the name Jan Adriaensz. van Staveren:
[...] it reminds of the oeuvre of the Leiden painter Jan Adriaensz. van Staveren (1613/14- 1669) who is thought to have trained with Gerrit Dou. Vogelaar points out that the similarity is especially strong with Van Staveren's Circumcision of circa 1640 [...] and Esther before Ahasuerus in The Leiden Collection, New York [...]
Here is the van Staveren Esther before Ahasuerus. I see little similarity with the putative Rembrandt Adoration. Van Staveren, being a pupil of Dou paints with a much more precise technique than we see in the Adoration. But that in a sense is beside the point - to show that they didn't let the consignor down, Christie's had only to demonstrate they consulted enough of the right kind of experts. Generally, these negligence cases are hard to win, partly because consignment agreements these days don't give you much to fall back on. You have to prove an auction house really screwed up. Christie's evidently did not.
So, given the painting then made over £10m, who did? It seems strange to say, but nobody, really. When the picture was offered by Sotheby's it had the endorsement of Professor Volker Manuth, a Rembrandt scholar of long standing. They also presented new technical evidence to support an attribution to Rembrandt. You can read Sotheby's extensive catalogue note for the painting here. Sotheby's were entitled to offer it as a Rembrandt, just as Christie's were entitled to sell it as not by Rembrandt.
The reason paintings like the Adoration can be in a state of Rembrandt purgatory is that in 2023, as now, there was no consensus in either the art market or the art historical community as to who had the most authoritative opinion on Rembrandt. So it will be possible to have some experts who say 'yes' and some who say 'no'. Of course, this would not have been possible when the late, great Rembrandt scholar Ernst van de Wetering was alive. His voice was considered definitive. But he died in 2021. Had he been alive in 2023, I doubt Sotheby's could have sold the painting as 'Rembrandt'.
And that for me is the most interesting element of this case; how the art market awards and then removes 'authority'. It seems strange that sometimes we are happy to rely on a single voice of authority, even for major artists like Rembrandt, on whom there will always be multiple scholars working at any one time. It is stranger still that when that single voice dies, we begin a kind of reset, almost as if they never existed.
I think I prefer a consensus approach, getting as many views as possible, even if that means there is less certainty. One of my little crusades is to get people, be they art lovers, auction specialists, buyers, or sellers to form their own view, rather than outsourcing it to people we assume have authority, often because they wrote a book on a particular artist. Writing and looking are different skills.
Only die-hard AHNers will care what I think about the attribution, but for what it's worth I thought (when the picture was at Sotheby's) that it probably was mostly by Rembrandt. The main caveat I had was that with Rembrandt's earliest work, which is what the Adoration would be, one sometimes gets glimpses of early Jan Lievens, with whom he shared a studio in Leiden.
As ever, let us know what you think!
