At Least Three Connoisseurs Think This $800 Lot That Sold for $870,000 Might Be a Rembrandt

Did someone just find a Rembrandt at a New Jersey auction house? At least three persons see something of Rembrandt in this small work (the buyer, the underbidder and Bendor Grosvenor.)

A reader sent him a screenshot from an auction at Nye & Co. in Bloomfield, NJ where a work estimated at $500-800 sold for $870,000. But the really wild thing about it is that Grosvenor—who has more than his share of impressive Old Master finds—is on the side of the buyer:

Still, $870,000 (or close to $1m with premium) is cheap for an early Rembrandt. It’s a little expensive for an early Dou.  Judging by the head of the figure in a red hat, I’d say the former is a better bet. If you bought it, good spot – and good luck!

Update: The Art Newspaper adds a few more details to the story:

The painting had been noticed by some in the trade and is suspected to be a depiction of “Smell” by a young Rembrandt from his series on the Five Senses. Dating from around 1625, the pictures are considered to be the very first paintings made by the Old Master, possibly done while still a student in the studio of the Dutch painter Pieter Lastman. Three others from the series are known: The Operation, The Sense of Touch and Three Singers, the Sense of Hearing are owned by the New York collector Tom Kaplan of the Leiden Gallery, New York, while The Spectacle Seller, The Sense of Sight is in the Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden.

Has a long-lost painting by a teenaged Rembrandt been discovered in New Jersey? (The Art Newspaper)

Sleeper Alert! – Art History News – by Bendor Grosvenor