Sotheby's will offer an unusual self-portrait by Rembrandt Van Rijn—one of only three in private hands—as a highlight in its cross-category evening sale in London on July 28. Report informs citing the Barron's.
Self-portrait, wearing a ruff and black hat, believed to have been painted in 1632, when the Dutch master was 26, is expected to fetch between £12 million and £16 million (US$15 million to US$20 million), and is the first lot to be announced for the first-of-its-kind live sale.
The other two privately owned self-portraits of the estimated 80 that Rembrandt painted—from the time he was 22 until he was 63—are unlikely to come to market, Sotheby's says. That's because one, discovered in 2003 and subsequently sold for £6.94 million by Sotheby's, is in Thomas Kaplan and Dafna Recanati Kaplan collection of 17th-century Dutch art in New York, and the other is on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Scotland, the auction house said.
The painting was first sold in Paris in January 1891 to Henry Robert Brand 2nd Viscount Hampden, according to the catalog note. A descendant sold it to J.O. Leegenhoek, from Paris, in a Sotheby's London auction in 1970 for £650, the note said. Leeuwenhoek's wife later sold it to a private collector, who sold it to Noortman Master Paintings in Maastricht, the Netherlands. It was then sold to the current owner in September 2005.