Kaja Veilleux, founder and owner of Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, stands with “Portrait of a Girl,” a painting “after Rembrandt” that he discovered in a client’s attic. It sold in August for $1.4 million, a record for the auction house. Courtesy of Thomaston Place Auction Galleries

Kaja Veilleux and his assistant found it in the attic.

They were on a routine house call in Camden, cataloging hundreds of items from a private estate for a big summer sale at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries.

“It was in perfect condition,” said Veilleux, founder and owner of the Midcoast auction house. “We wiped the dust off, and that’s it.”

In a gold frame was what Veilleux believes is an original painting by the 17th-century Dutch master Rembrandt Harmenz van Rijn. “Portrait of a Girl” sold Aug. 24 to a private collector in Europe for $1.4 million, a record for the auction house. But the listing says the painting is “after Rembrandt,” which means it is in his style but not necessarily by him. That small caveat hints at a much bigger debate in the art world about which paintings are actually by Rembrandt – and which are imitations.

Still, Veilleux feels confident in the painting’s origins, even if he did not go so far as to label it “by Rembrandt” or consult with art historians.

“I’ve been doing this for 53 years, and I’ve got pretty good instincts,” he said.

Other experts, however, say that it would be difficult to be certain just from looking at the painting and that authentication of a Rembrandt ideally would include records research and technical analysis.

“Today, we’re trying to figure out which artist painted what,” said Betsy Wieseman, curator and head of the Department of Northern European Paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. “But in the 17th century, when they’re being painted, everybody was trying to look like Rembrandt during a certain period of time. They’re doing their best to erase any distinguishing tics, essentially, and get as close as they could to what Rembrandt was doing. We’re working at cross purposes here.”

MASTER OF MYSTERY

This mystery dates back 400 years.

The son of a miller, Rembrandt was born in 1606 in the Netherlands. Today, he is considered one of the most important painters of the Dutch Golden Age. His work evolved over his career, but he is particularly famous for his treatment of light and shadows.

Despite his distinct style – or perhaps because of it – his work is particularly difficult to authenticate. Experts said the total number of paintings attributed to Rembrandt has changed dramatically over the years and now hovers somewhere around 300, depending on whom you ask.

Arthur Wheelock started working at the National Gallery of Art in 1973, just a few years after a scholar had challenged a large swath of work previously believed to be by Rembrandt, including paintings in the museum’s collection.

“The whole world that I was trained in was being questioned seriously,” Wheelock said.

As the curator of Dutch and Flemish paintings, Wheelock spent decades conserving and studying those works and others to determine their authenticity. He worked for 45 years at the National Gallery and also as a professor at the University of Maryland; he is now the senior adviser to the Leiden Collection, a private collection of Dutch paintings.

“From the 1970s to now, there’s been a lot of development of technology and ways to study paintings and ways to understand how they were built,” he said. “A lot more is known about the layering of paint and the types of pigments. A lot more study has been done about the students of Rembrandt and how they painted. But it’s still a lot of gray area.”

Experts cited multiple reasons for the difficulty in authenticating the master’s work.

Wieseman said Rembrandt worked for an art dealer in his early career and took commissions as part of a studio of artists. And even if he did the original portrait, a wealthy family might have commissioned copies by other artists, so multiple people could have their own version in an era long before photographs. Wheelock said another problem arises when considering Rembrandt’s later career. As he became more famous, he trained many students in his style. In the centuries since his death, artists have continued to replicate his techniques. As a result, it can be difficult to know by look alone if a painting was done by Rembrandt, one of his students or an admirer many years later. Even a signature can’t always be trusted as evidence.

‘NO QUALMS ABOUT IT’

Still, curators and researchers have developed practices to try to answer that question. They review available records – bills of sale, wills and the like. They take a work out of its frame to clean and examine it. They do technical analysis, such as taking an X-ray. Imaging can identify what materials were used in the painting and what is below the visible surface of the paint.

“One of the things that can alert you to whether a painting is an original composition by an artist or a copy is whether, in these imaging investigations, you see evidence of changes that the artist might have made as they worked through the composition,” Wieseman said. “If it’s a copy, they already know what they’re going to do, so you rarely see evidence of any major changes, whereas in an original, an artist might have fussed with the position of the head or where the hands are or, hmm, that color doesn’t look right.”

Some clues are more subjective.

“It comes down to the finer points of connoisseurship,” Wieseman said. “The materials that artists used at the time were pretty standardized. The way in which they used them can differ subtly. It’s really getting deep in the weeds.”

Veilleux did not take any of those steps.

He said he recognized the style as “so Rembrandt” right away. The painting is done on a cradled oak panel and mounted in a gold frame. When he turned it over, he found a label that attributed the painting to Rembrandt and noted that it had been loaned to an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1970.

That was enough for Veilleux. He said the auction house did not conduct technical analysis or consult any outside experts. The painting did not have any other records attached, but Veilleux said he believes the painting was purchased around 1907 and had been passed down in the family ever since.

“There were no qualms about it at all,” he said.

Even though he was certain – “100%,” he said – Veilleux said it was cataloged as “after Rembrandt” because that official verification has not happened.

“It lets the customers make up their own minds of what they think it is, based on their knowledge and how much they want to spend,” he said.

Thomaston House Auction Galleries sold the painting on the second day of its annual Summer Grandeur event. The estimate for the lot (No. 2363) was $10,000 to $15,000. (Veilleux said his strategy over the years has been to underestimate items, which attracts more interest and buyers.) Most of the action was on the phones, where staffers worked with nine bidders and the price escalated quickly. Three remained in the running at the $900,000 mark; two at $1 million. The “hammer price” for the winner was $1,175,000. With a buyer’s premium, the total sale was $1,410,000. It was the highest ever recorded at Thomaston Place, surpassing a $960,000 price tag for a Winslow Homer painting a few years ago.

The auction house has declined to identify the buyer or the seller but said the painting will go to “a private European collector.”

After Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669).”Portrait of a Girl,” oil on cradled oak panel, unsigned, label verso from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, lent for a 1970 exhibition. In a hand carved Dutch gold frame, OS: 28 1/2″ x 24 1/2″, SS: 20 1/2″ x 16 1/2″. Courtesy of Thomaston Place Auction Galleries

THE VALUE OF AUTHENTICITY

Veilleux did not know the buyer’s motivation or whether the bidders believed it to be a real Rembrandt. But the level of interest and the sale price cemented his own opinion.

“The price and the amount of people that were bidding on it reflect the interest and the fact that it is a genuine Rembrandt,” he said.

Neither Wheelock nor Wieseman could speak to the true attribution of the painting found in Camden.

“When I look at the painting, I can see Rembrandt connections, but that doesn’t say Rembrandt or not Rembrandt,” Wheelock said.

“Portrait of a Girl” depicts a young woman in a black dress with a white ruffled collar and a white cap. Wheelock said it appears similar to Rembrandt’s early portraits from the 1630s.

“There are often questions about this early period of Rembrandt portraits,” he said. “So in a way, comparisons are complicated for this period of time because the works that you’re comparing to are not always firmly attributed to Rembrandt.”

He noted several interesting features – the progress from dark to light in the background; the way the girl is looking toward the light, which is characteristic of Rembrandt’s portraits of women; the shadows in the collar. He said it is hard to know the motivations of the bidders, but he guessed that the winner would take further steps to try to pinpoint the painting’s creator.

“I think there’s a clear sense that this is a good quality painting, Rembrandt or not, that is worth the risk or worth bidding up a bit,” Wheelock said.

The answer matters, experts said, because it could help us better understand an artist who had a major impact on the world.

“There are reasons why those big-name artists have earned the big names that they have,” Wieseman said. “For the most part, they had a particularly individual and creative approach to technique, subject matter, the act of creating. Most artists before the modern period didn’t leave documentation or written records of what they were doing, what they were thinking, how they were making a work of art, so it’s the works themselves that are the only connection to that individual and the act of creation.”

And an answer could have an impact on the painting’s value in the future.

In 2021, Christie’s auctioned a 17th-century painting titled “The Adoration of Kings.” It said an artist associated with Rembrandt painted the biblical scene. The New York Times reported that it had an estimated value of $17,000 and a sale price of $992,000.

Two years later, Sotheby’s auctioned the painting again. This time, it was identified as by Rembrandt himself. Experts (including Wheelock, who was quoted in the Times article as being convinced “Adoration” is by the master) took different positions on the painting’s authorship, and the two famed auction houses stood by their interpretations. Ultimately, no one bid on the painting, but it sold to a buyer who had already agree to pay a minimum amount. The price was $13.8 million.

Veilleux, for his part, has moved on.

“This is the only Rembrandt we’ve ever had, and we’ll probably never get another one,” he said. “I don’t have time. I’m out gathering stuff every single day. We build another sale in 90 days.”