Rembrandt valuation
The Night Watch, the self-portraits, and about three hundred etchings that collectors have prized for nearly four centuries.
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) was born in Leiden, trained there and briefly in Amsterdam with Pieter Lastman, and moved to Amsterdam in the early 1630s, where he became the city's most sought-after portrait painter and ran a large studio of pupils.
What a work by Rembrandt is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Bio
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) was born in Leiden, trained there and briefly in Amsterdam with Pieter Lastman, and moved to Amsterdam in the early 1630s, where he became the city's most sought-after portrait painter and ran a large studio of pupils. The Night Watch, the group portrait of a civic militia company, was finished in 1642 and is in the Rijksmuseum. His later years brought financial trouble and bankruptcy in 1656, and a late style of rough, deep-toned paint and searching self-portraits that many think his greatest work. Across his career he made about three hundred etchings, from Biblical scenes and landscapes to beggars and self-portraits, and experimented constantly with paper, ink and the plates themselves.
Most of what comes to market under his name is etchings, and the question is when an impression was printed. His copper plates outlived him and were printed again and again, by dealers in the eighteenth century and for editions as late as 1906, often after reworking, so posthumous impressions far outnumber lifetime ones. The state of the plate, the paper, including the Japanese paper and vellum he used, the watermark, the inking and the richness of the drypoint burr decide the value. With paintings and drawings the question is his hand or his pupils', which the Rembrandt Research Project reassessed picture by picture from 1968 to 2014, removing many works from his name and restoring some.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
