Two rare Rembrandt portraits up for auction, worth millions of dollars

Paintings of relatives by Dutch master Rembrandt are expected to sell for between $6 million and $10 million.

Signed and dated 1635, the two paintings depict an elderly couple with family ties to Rembrandt.

Measuring approximately 20 centimeters tall, the two paintings depict wealthy businessman Jan Willemsz van der Pluym and his wife Jaapgen Carels, who came from a prominent family in the Dutch city of Leiden.

Signed and dated 1635, the two paintings depict an elderly couple with family ties to Rembrandt.

Their son Dominicus van der Pluym married Rembrandt's cousin Cornelia van Suytbroec. They had one child, Karel van der Pluym, who trained in painting with Rembrandt.

In 1635, the time the two portraits were painted, Jan Willemsz van der Pluym and his wife Jaapgen Carels bought a garden next to Rembrandt's mother's garden in Leiden.

Experts at Christie's auction house, which is handling the sale, said in a press release that the two portraits have "clear provenance".

The two artworks remained in the care of the family until 1760, a year after the death of the couple's great-grandson, Marten ten Hove. They then went to Warsaw, Poland, where they entered the private collection of Count Vincent Potocki, before briefly entering the collection of Baron d'Ivry in Paris in 1820 and then James Murray, 1st Baron Glenlyon.

In June 1824, Murray put the artworks up for sale at Christie's, where they were described as "very Rembrandt – with exquisite colour".

Since that sale, the two paintings have remained in the UK in the private collection of the same family and are unknown to experts. The current owners have not been named.

Henry Pettifer, vice president of Old Masters at Christie's, told CNN in a phone interview that the discovery was made several years ago, as part of a routine appraisal.

“The paintings immediately attracted special attention, even though the owners did not expect it,” Pettifer confirmed, adding that the owners were also surprised.

Rembrandt's Self-Portrait

Pettifer said he was "extremely excited" to see the paintings, but "at the discovery stage, I haven't come to any conclusions yet".

Details of an earlier sale at Christie's in 1824 further confirmed the provenance, followed by a lengthy period of study at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where the portraits were examined and subjected to scientific analysis.

“What is extraordinary is that the two paintings are completely unknown. They never appear in any 19th or 20th century Rembrandt literature, so they are completely unknown,” Pettifer said.

Pettifer told CNN that the two paintings show the artist's close relationship with his sitter. "They're not monumental works. I think they're the smallest portraits that Rembrandt did," he said.

Two works by the famous artist Rembrandt will be exhibited in New York and Amsterdam next month, then return to London for an exhibition before being auctioned on July 6.

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