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| The Unconscious Patient - Rembrandt |
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
