London, two portraits by Rembrandt smash all records: the pair sold for 13 million euros

A pair of Rembrandt portraits, which remained in the same private collection for nearly 200 years, sold at auction at Christie’s in London for £11,235,000 (€13,122,480), more than double the initial estimate.

These are portraits of two relatives of the Dutch artist, Jan Willemsz van der Pluym (about 1565-1644) and Jaapgen Carels (1565-1640), dated 1635, and have remained completely unknown to scholars up to now. After a thorough academic investigation and scientific analysis carried out at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the pair of paintings have been authenticated as the work of Rembrandt. Small in size and painted from life with Rembrandt’s characteristic virtuosity, these two paintings offer a tender portrait of a couple of elderly and dignified relatives of the artist.

The two characters portrayed, the wealthy Leiden plumber Jan Willemsz van der Pluym and his wife Jaapgen Carels, were intimately linked to Rembrandt. The Van der Pluyms were a prominent Leiden family and their son Dominicus van der Pluym married Cornelia van Suytbroeck, daughter of Rembrandt’s maternal uncle Willem van Suytbroeck. Dominicus and Cornelia had a son, the artist Karel van der Pluym, who is thought to have trained with Rembrandt and to have included the artist’s only surviving heir, Tito, in his will. Karel’s uncle Willem Jansz van der Pluym also posed for Rembrandt’s most finished portrait. In 1635, the year these portraits were painted, Jan Willemsz van der Pluym and Jaapgen Carels bought a garden next to that of Rembrandt’s mother in Leiden.
They remained in the family until 1760
The portraits have a substantial and virtually uninterrupted provenance. They remained in the family of the two characters portrayed until 1760, when they were auctioned off in Amsterdam after the death of their great-grandson Marten ten Hove (1683-1759). From there 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 to James Murray, Baron Glenlyon (1782-1837), who placed them sold at Christie’s 18 June 1824, lot 76, listed as ‘Rembrandt – very lively and finely coloured’, where they were purchased. For the past two centuries they have remained in the same British private collection. Christie’s holds the world auction record for Rembrandt, set in 2009 with the sale of ‘Portrait of a Man with Open Arms’ for £20,201,250. In 2016, Christie’s facilitated one of the most important private sales in history, with two masterpieces by Rembrandt Van Rijn secured for the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum.