MOSCOW, May 15 Two previously unknown portraits by Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606 — 1669) have been discovered after 200 years of storage in a private collection of a British family, the Financial Times reported.
According to her, the experts of the auction house Christie's stumbled upon the paintings of the Dutch master when they conducted a «routine assessment».
«I didn't know what I was about to see,» said auction house spokesman Henry Pettifer.
«I dared to dream. But it was surprising to me that these paintings had never been studied before. They were completely absent in the literature about Rembrandt,» he said.
According to the newspaper, both the auction house itself and the Rijksmuseum, an art museum in Amsterdam that specializes in the work of Rembrandt, came to the conclusion about the authenticity of the paintings. It is noted that the paintings depict a couple «connected by family ties with the artist» — Jan Willems van der Pluim and his wife Jaapgen Karels.
The auction house will now put the portraits up for sale in London in July. Before that, they will be shown in New York and Amsterdam. The estimated cost of the two paintings will be 5-8 million pounds.