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“Abraham and the Angels” is expected to reach $ 20 or $ 30 million. A record per square centimeter. The painting has a good history and its sale is guaranteed by Sotheby’s.
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“Abraham and the Angels” by Rembrandt, 1646.
Credit: Sotheby’s
Sixteen centimeters by twenty-one. It’s a very small table. A postcard. Eine Postkarte. Una cartolina. A postcard, what! But its postage will cost the buyer dearly. Sotheby’s wants between $ 20 million and $ 30 million for Rembrandt’s “Abraham and the Angels,” which will be offered in the January 28 antique art sale in New York. A vacation of which I have already mentioned the star lot. It is a “Portrait of a young man” by Sandro Botticelli, estimated at the trifle of 80 million.
Rembrandt’s self-portrait sold at the end of July in London. Photo Sotheby’s.
The tableautin we are talking about today has a beautiful “pedigree”. Sotheby’s is in charge of giving the old provenances, while the specialized journalists reveal the recent owners. Dated 1646, the panel was sold the following year. It then passed into the hands of Ferdinand Bol, a pupil of the master. Then from the patrician of Amsterdam and patron Jan Six. Around 1800 it was in the possession of Benjamin West, an American painter who had made a career in London, where he became director of the Royal Academy. In 1848, the work went on sale. She hit 64 pounds, a small price even then. Sotheby’s passes the baton to the chroniclers here. These specify that this pocket “Abraham” was acquired in 2005 for an unknown sum (“being around five million dollars”) by Max Fisch. This big fish is one of the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The seller (or sellers) would be Otto Naumann and Alfred Bader. Fisch obviously wants to gain added value. He is greedy. What am I saying greedy! Going from five to twenty or thirty million in fifteen years is indeed high-flying.
Museums on the sidelines
Who will buy? I immediately thought of the “trader” Thomas Kaplan. A hyper-cultured billionaire (yes, if it exists!) With the most beautiful collection in the world of Rembranesque paintings in private hands. A set that I saw exhibited at the Louvre in 2017, and which seemed very intelligent to me. This possibility is excluded by Jan Six XI, a direct descendant of the man who owned the painting at the end of the 17th century. Discoverer of at least two Rembrandts, recognized international dealer, Six knows his world well, but… There are obviously still possible museums, but we know that they have just experienced their first “annus horribilis” in 2020, while waiting for the second in 2021. The people of GAFA and e-commerce remain totally acultural. Fisch doesn’t have to be really worried, however. The actual sale is assured by Sotheby’s, which retains its bad habit of guaranteeing sellers. One day there will be the big tumble. Poum!
The Rothschild’s “standard bearer”. We are talking about 165 million euros. Photo DR.
However, 20 or 30 million, is it too expensive? Yes and no. I’m not going to insult the new poor of 2021 here, but in July 2020 a small self-portrait of Rembrandt (very, very pretty) was sold, still by Sotheby’s, for 14.5 million pounds in London. And the Rothschilds want 165 million euros in Paris for Rembrandt’s “The Standard Bearer”, executed in 1636. A large canvas (125 by 105 centimeters) banned from leaving the territory by France in 2019. A France who seems to have lost interest in this masterpiece ever since. She will have to let him go if this continues …
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