The Netherlands Makes a Controversial Decision to Buy a Prized Rembrandt for a Whopping $198 Million - by aroline Goldstein,

The Dutch government, in association with the Rembrandt Association and the Rijksmuseum, has controversially agreed to pay a staggering €175 million ($198 million) for a painting by Rembrandt van Rijn to keep the work in the country.

The picture, a three-quarter-length self-portrait of the Dutch artist, has been in private hands for centuries, passing from the collections of King George IV to the French Rothschild family, which acquired the work in 1844. It later came to the children of Élie de Rothschild, the patriarch of the French branch of the banking and art-collecting family, when he died in 2007.

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The Netherlands: Arts and Culture - New' Rembrandt discovery, The Unconscious Patient, debuts at Dutch art fair - by Mike Corder

The Unconscious Patient - Rembrandt

The painting was labelled as the work of an unknown artist from Europe's Continental School, dated somewhere in the 19th century. It had a presale estimate of $500-$800 US when it went to auction in New Jersey last year.

French art dealer Bertrand Gautier thought the small oil-on-panel painting of three figures was older. And he thought he knew exactly who had painted it: Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn.

Unfortunately for Gautier and his partner Bertrand Talabardon, another dealer had the same hunch. In a few minutes of phone bidding, the price shot up, and in the end the Paris gallery owners paid just over $1 million US, including the buyer's premium.

After the painting was restored it is now considered a genuine Rembrandt dating from 1624-1625, hung in pride of place at the entrance to the gallery's stand at the prestigious TEFAF art fair in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht.

"This is a great discovery. It really is absolutely fascinating. This is the very beginning of Rembrandt, more or less the first picture he ever painted," said Prof. Christopher Brown, an expert in Dutch art at Oxford University.

It was painted when Rembrandt was just 18 or 19, at the start of his career, when he had finished his education in Amsterdam and moved back to his home town of Leiden.

"The drawing is slightly crude, the colours are very vivid," Brown said.  "It's the beginning, the absolute beginning."

The picture is part of a series depicting the five senses. It has been titled The Unconscious Patient (Sense of Smell) and shows a woman holding a handkerchief, presumably containing smelling salts, under the nose of a young man who has fainted after a surgeon has performed a blood-letting.

Three of the "sense" paintings were already known, and with the rediscovery of the sense of smell, only "taste" is missing.

Read more: 'New' Rembrandt, The Unconscious Patient, debuts at Dutch art fair - Arts & Entertainment - CBC News