Let’s Hear It for the Optimists

Via David Packwood, I was made aware of the sale, last Friday at Moore, Allen & Innocent, for £2 million, of a Dutch 16th-Century portrait that the buyer and whoever he was bidding against evidently thought was a Rembrandt. Now, it certainly is a good-looking painting and evidently related to Rembrandt, but — at least judging from the low-quality reproduction available at the auction house’s site — this is pretty far from the real thing.

I am not a specialist, but to me the handling on the face, with its patchy application, and the superficially applied highlights on the tunic spell out Pastiche. Loudly. In the early period emulated here, Rembrandt did indeed apply paint in rather thick patches without blending a whole lot, but his results were still of a wholly different order of nuance. Packwood has an example up, which should demonstrate the difference in quality conclusively.

I am unfortunately not that well-versed in the work of Rembrandt’s students and artistic circle, but the suggestion made in the comments section of Packwood’s site, that it could well be by Isack Jouderville, seems convincing. Nice picture, but £2 million..?