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    • Posts Tagged ‘Rembrandt’

    CHRISTIE’S PROJECTS $6.2 BILLION GLOBAL SALES IN 2025

    Wednesday, December 17th, 2025

    Arnout Tholinx, Inspector (circa 1656) made £3.1 million in December, a new world record for a Rembrandt print.

    With projected global sales of $6.2 billion in 2025 Christie’s is ending the year on a high note. Auction sales accounted for $4.7 billion (up 8%), private sales for $1.5 billion according to figures released today by Christie’s. No less than 17 works sold privately for more that $15 million and the top three works sold by Christie’s this year were sold privately.

    “The energy has returned to the saleroom, online, and across the market. We’ve seen renewed confidence worldwide, reflected in these outstanding results. Our selling performance has remained consistently strong throughout the year: a solid first half followed by an even more competitive second half, delivering exceptional, market-leading outcomes for our clients” said Bonnie Brennan, Christie’s ceo.

    The Americas amounted for 41% of sales, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) 36% and Asia Pacific for 23%.

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    REMBRANDT ETCHING ENTERS NATIONAL COLLECTION IN IRELAND

    Friday, August 9th, 2024

    Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) – Landscape with Cottages and a Hay Barn, (1641). Etching with touches of drypoint on paper. Image, National Gallery of Ireland

    An etching by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) – Landscape with Cottages and a Hay Barn (1641) – has been acquired by the National Gallery of Ireland and is the first work on paper by Rembrandt to enter the national collection. The gallery is celebrating its 170th anniversary by announcing recent acquisitions, free tours and releasing free tickets to ‘Women Impressionists’ for Culture Night 2024. Hughie O’Donoghue’s monumental Original Sins (2022), commissioned under the Decade of Centenaries Programme, has been acquired as a heritage gift under Section 1003. A vibrant oil on canvas by Dairine Vanston, On Huband Bridge, Dublin (1974), records a Dublin landmark just a few minutes’ walk from Vanston’s home and studio on Mount Street Crescent, but suggests more tropical climes. 

    A new strategic plan for 2024-2028 includes a range of priorities which will build on the Gallery’s existing work and help it evolve to best serve its collections and audiences, in the future. Four new priorities have been identified: Developing and caring for our living collections for public benefit; a National Gallery for all; excellence in Corporate Services and Strategic Partnerships to grow national and international partnerships and income streams across the public and private sectors.

    Hughie O’Donoghue (b1953) – Original Sins series in the Shaw Room of the National Gallery. Photo courtesy National Gallery of Ireland.

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    RUBENS, REMBRANDT AND VERMEER AT IRELAND’S NATIONAL GALLERY

    Saturday, February 24th, 2024
    Rembrandt van Rijn – The Laughing Man c. 1629-1630 COURTESY MAURITSHUIS, THE HAGUE

    Turning Heads: Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer opens today at the National Gallery of Ireland. Featuring works by Dutch and Flemish artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the show explores tronies – intriguing paintings of heads. The exhibition features artists’ portrayals of the human face, its morphology, expression, and lighting around it. These works are to small and playful paintings of heads which became very popular in the early seventeenth century. Turning Heads traces the emergence of this historical art phenomenon from the sixteenth century to its heyday through the work of iconic artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Johannes Vermeer.

    Highlights include Vermeer’s Girl with the Red Hat, c. 1669, the artist’s smallest recorded painting. The work is filled with beautiful colourful details, and a highly sensitive use of light that reflects his fascination with optics. Rembrandt’s The Laughing Man, c. 1629-1630 is an example of how artists studied their own faces to apprehend its morphology and diverse expressions. Here, Rembrandt’s likeness can be seen in the grinning character of his painting. Rubens worked with a variety of models to study their features from different angles and with great observation. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp and the National Gallery of Ireland and it will run until May 26.

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    FROM €15,000 to €12.7 MILLION IN JUST TWO YEARS

    Friday, December 8th, 2023
    Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn – The Adoration of the Kings

    Rembrandt’s rediscovered Adoration of the Kings sold for £10.9 million (€12.7 million) at Sotheby’s in London on December 6. Just two years ago – when it was attributed to the Circle of Rembrandt – it was valued at just €10,000-€15,000 at Christie’s in Amsterdam. The complex monochromatic painting had been almost entirely unseen by scholars since the 1950’s when it came to light.

    It was included in museum exhibitions and referenced as a Rembrandt work by leading Rembrandt scholars in the 1950s, but in 1960 German art historian Kurt Bauch, who only knew the painting from a black and white photograph, described it as a product of the Rembrandt School and omitted it from from the catalogue raisonné he was compiling. Thereafter, the painting was “entirely overlooked and completely ignored in the Rembrandt literature,” according to Sothebys. Following an 18 month research programme by Sotheby’s it was recognised as a work of great significance from Rembrandt’s early career.

    The Adoration of the Kings was acquired by collector J.C.H. Heldring in Amsterdam in 1955. His widow sold it to a German family in 1985, where it remained until it was sold by Christie’s in Amsterdam two years ago. The painting, which measures 9.6 x 7.3 inches, was purchased by an anonymous buyer for €860,000 at the Christie’s sale — more than 50 times the estimated value. It was later identified as the work of the Dutch master. 

    The vast majority of Rembrandt’s works hang in museums around the world, and almost all of those that have come to auction over the past three decades have been portraits or studies of single character heads.

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    UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE MAKES RECORD £12.6 MILLION

    Friday, July 7th, 2023
    MICHAEL SWEERTS (BRUSSELS 1618-1664 GOA) – The Artist’s Studio with a Seamstress

    This completely unpublished and unknown canvas by Michael Sweerts made a record £12,615,000 over a top estimate of £2-£3 million at Christie’s Old Master’s sale in London. The unpublished and previously unknown canvas has been recognised as a signal masterpiece of Michael Sweerts’s art and a highly important addition to the oeuvre of ‘one of the most creative, enigmatic and hauntingly memorable artists of the seventeenth century’ (P. C. Sutton, Michael Sweerts: 1618-1664, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, 2002, p. 11). Painted in Rome, where Sweerts is documented living in the Via Margutta between 1646 and 1652, this is perhaps his greatest picture on the theme of the artist’s studio, borne out of his own deep interest in education and artistic instruction. Two of his best-known works, also from his Roman period, are on the same subject: the Artist’s Studio in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, datable to circa 1650 and In the Studio, in the Detroit Institute of Arts, dated 1652. The present picture may pre-date both works and was likely painted soon after Sweerts’ arrival in Rome.

    The landmark re-discovery of the last known pair of portraits by Rembrandt in private hands, Portrait of Jan Willemsz. van der Pluym and Jaapgen Carels, sold for £11,235,000. A discovery of a pioneering early work by Fra Angelico The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Baptist and the Magdalen at the Foot of the Cross made a new auction record for the artist of  £5,001,000. Christie’s Classic Week Evening sales realised a combined total of £68,156,850 achieving sell-through rates of 80% by lot and 92% by value. A total of 36% of new registrants to these sales were millennials; the breakdown of buyers by region was:43% EMEA / 35% APAC / 22% Americas.

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    LAST REMBRANDT PORTRAITS IN PRIVATE HANDS AT CHRISTIE’S

    Sunday, June 4th, 2023

    A landmark rediscovery of the last known pair of portraits by Rembrandt to remain in private hands will highlight Christie’s Old Masters sale in London on July 6.  The subjects are relatives of Rembrandt,  wealthy Leiden plumber Jan Willemsz van der Pluym (c1565-1644) and his wife Jaapgen Carels (1565-1640). Signed and dated 1635 they were acquired at Christie’s by an ancestor of the present owners almost two centuries ago and have remained completely unknown to scholars ever since. They return to auction after an extensive investigation and scientific analysis at the Rijksmuseum.  The portraits remained in the family of the sitters until 1760, when they were sold at auction in Amsterdam. They passed to  the collection of Count Vincent Potocki (c.1740-1825) in Warsaw, before briefly entering the collection of Baron d’Ivry in Paris in 1820 and then James Murray, 1st Baron Glenlyon (1782-1837), who put them up for sale at Christie’s in  June of 1824.  The estimate is £5 million – £8 million (€5.75 million – €9.2 million). UPDATE: THESE SOLD FOR FOR £11,235,000

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    GREAT SHOWS AT NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND AND IMMA

    Saturday, July 16th, 2022
    Rembrandt van Rijn – Self-portrait with beret, wide eyed 1630 (etching) Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

    Rich pickings for art lovers at summer exhibitions in Dublin range from remarkable drawings on loan from the Rijksmuseum at the National Gallery of Ireland to an artistic examination of the science fiction of the present at IMMA. Intimate insights into 17th century life in the Netherlands can be seen at Dutch Drawings: highlights from the Rijksmuseum which opens at the National Gallery today.  This rare loan exhibition selected from the world renowned collection in Amsterdam offers 48 works by 31 different artists. Among them are Rembrandt, Hendrick Avercamp, Nicolaes Berchem, Jacob van Ruisdael, Gerard ter Boch, Ferdinand Bol and Albert Cuyp.

    This show offers Irish audiences a unique opportunity to view at close quarters works which range from studies of plants and animals, daily life, portraits, architecture and landscape. This art conveys a strong sense of what life as it was lived then was like.  Drawing was a portable and inexpensive medium.  There are differing techniques with works in graphite, ink, watercolour, chalks, etchings and woodcuts plus a small number of prints by Rembrandt. The exhibition shows artists striving to understand the world around them.  It continues at the National Gallery runs until November 6.

    Aelbert Cuyp – View of Dordrecht c1650. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

    The exhibition at IMMA is concerned with insights by artists into the world as we know it now.  On show here is a cross section of works produced between 2022 and 2018 by The Otolith Group, a London based collective founded in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun.  Otoliths are bodies in the inner ear involved with sensing gravity and movement. These pioneering artworks utilising film, video and multi-screen installations address contemporary, social and planetary issues, the disruptions of neo-colonialism, the way in which humans have impacted the earth and the influence of new technology on consciousness. The exhibition is entitled Xenogenesis (the production of an organism unlike the parent) and it reflects the commitment by the artists to creating what they think of as ‘a science fiction of the present’ through images, voices, sounds and performance.  Themes are both universal and relevant to contemporary life.
    IMMA director and curator of the exhibition Annie Fletcher said: “The Otolith Group’s films and installations address the forces and events that have shaped our world while offering inspiring examples and models  of how we might collectively imagine a different future”.

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    CATCH REMBRANDT IN CORK OVER CHRISTMAS

    Tuesday, December 21st, 2021

    Rembrandt in Print at the Crawford Gallery in Cork until January 9 offers a rare opportunity to see 50 of the finest works from the collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Hailed as the greatest painter of the Dutch Golden Age Rembrandt was one of the most innovative and experimental printmakers of the 17th century. This touring exhibition shows him as an unrivalled storyteller with prints dating from 1630 to the late 1650’s.  They are displayed here together for the first time. Opening hours over the Christmas period are extensive.

    Rembrandt van Rijn – The Rat Catcher (1632)

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    HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND REMBRANDT

    Thursday, December 24th, 2020
    Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606–1669) – Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 1647 © National Gallery of Ireland

    This seasonal image by Rembrandt is from the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland. It was purchased in 1883. We wish all our readers a very Happy Christmas.

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    NEW RECORD FOR A REMBRANDT SELF PORTRAIT AT SOTHEBY’S

    Tuesday, July 28th, 2020

    A small self-portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn made £14,549,400 setting a new auction record for a self-portrait by the artist at auction at Sotheby’s marquee sale in London today. It was chased by six bidders. The previous record of £6.9 million for a self-portrait by the artist was in 2003.  

    Rembrandt recorded his own physiognomy in no fewer than 80 paintings, etchings and drawings, throughout his career. Dated to 1632, this self-portrait of the artist aged 26-years, was created at a pivotal moment in his life, when he was just establishing himself in Amsterdam and enjoying new-found commercial success. The work is one of only two self-portraits in which he shows himself formally dressed. Self-portrait, wearing a ruff and black hat is one of only three remaining in private hands. Sotheby’s believe it is the only one ever likely to come to auction.

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