Rembrandt's Unfinished Business Boosts Sotheby's Old Masters Sales

A religious painting that Rembrandt began as a young artist but never finished emerged as the star of Sotheby’s London sales last week.

It was a remarkable turnaround for a painting that had long been considered the work of an anonymous Netherlandish artist. Known in the trade as a “sleeper,” the painting helped Sotheby’s generate $64.8m in total sales of Old Masters, 19th-century paintings, and works on paper across four auctions held on July 1–2.

Overall, the sales scored C+ on the HENI Auction Index, a rebound from four consecutive Ds.

The painting, Let the Little Children Come Unto Me, which had a guarantee, sold for $10.59m including fees, meeting its estimate. The work last appeared at auction in 2014, when it sold for $1.7m, before experts reattributed the canvas to the 21-year-old Rembrandt.

The HENI Auction Index benchmarks auction performance across more than 10 metrics, including total sales revenue and the number of lots offered. Last week, 407 historical works were consigned to the summer sales, 13% fewer than the average for comparable auctions. Total sales revenue, when adjusted for inflation, was also weaker than usual by 38%.

Fewer lots exceeded both their low and high estimates than in previous sales, with the share of lots surpassing each estimate falling by 10 and 8 percentage points, respectively.

The hammer-to-mid-estimate ratio picked up but remained 16% below the norm.

The share of lots with strong guarantees was nearly 2 percentage points above the norm, while those with weak guarantees were in line with the norm.

Nearly 33% percentage of lots were bought in, which is in line with comparable sales, but the 2% of lots withdrawn ahead of the sale represented a 1.6 percentage-point increase.

A painting by Paulus Potter, another Dutch master who found fame while still young, was among the lots that failed to sell, despite a blue-blooded pedigree. Landscape with Livestock and a Milkmaid, which had a $2.64 million low estimate, was consigned by the British aristocratic family, the Earls of Swinton, who have owned it for almost 130 years.

Methodology: for how the HENI Auction Index classifies sales, see here.