For the auction house, the portrait was simply a knockoff of a 17th century Rembrandt so they set a price of $3,100 for it. There was actually a British buyer who knew what he was doing when he paid 1,500 times more than that. Bought from an English auction house was a self portrait done by the Dutch master depicted with his head tilted back in easygoing laughter authenticated by experts, the Rembrandt Laughing, and it was only sold four a cheap four and a half million.
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. Changing the value of the painting was not something that the art expert from Sotheby's agreed to do. The works of Rembrandt only come on the market once every couple of years and so the sale is a rare opportunity in itself.
Rembrandt made the self portrait around 1628, when he was in his early 20s and still in his hometown, Leiden. His tools included a mirror and his face and he played with different expressions at a time when he was already earning his reputation as an artist. Unbelievable was the presence it has. It was the light as well as the laughter which were in their most natural form.
In a span of over 100 years the painting belonged to an English family. Based on assumptions it could have been an imitator or a student of Rembrandt's. Showing only a little of the painting's luminosity or depth, poor photographs could have been the reasons why the auction house came up with a low evaluation. When it comes to this little work, a 23 page analysis explained how Rembrandt could have been the only one responsible for the piece because of the brush stroke, monogram, contour, and materials.
The painting was a genuine Rembrandt from the monogram RHL and this might have been realized by the winner of the auction considering the rare style used by the artist for only a year. What the monogram meant was Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden. For its assessment the auction house recorded the signature HL. More convincing are these initials for they were painted onto the background and the direction of the brush strokes match another one of Rembrandt's monograms.
What confused the experts was the body shape of the laughing Rembrandt. Aside from the little description of the underlying anatomy, there was a woolly blanket for clothing, it lay in lumpy folds, and the metal armor and glossy shirt appeared amorphous. Here he applied a contour which had a character of its own and used it in his later works. This contour possessed a certain autonomy and it has been said that Rembrandt may have been experimenting with this way of painting the body.
Matching the other Rembrandt paintings is the thin copper plate on which the piece is painted when it comes to the size and type. In the same way as all other works by Rembrandt, xrays have been able to show that this painting also has a second painting underneath. There was no one who knew where the painting was before 1800 and a Flemish engraver accidentally attributed the original to the Dutch painter Frans Hals when he made a reproductive print not seeing how the image bore the face of Rembrandt. After that there is silence about the painting, we don't know where it stayed.
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