In August 2024, a 17th-century portrait found among piles of art inside a Maine attic fetched $1.41 million at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, drawing nine bidders and vastly surpassing its initial $10,000 to $15,000 projection.
The artwork, titled Portrait of a Young Girl, had reportedly remained in a farmhouse in Camden, Maine, for decades. Kaja Veilleux, who serves as owner, appraiser and auctioneer at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, stumbled upon it during a standard appraisal visit for a wealthy family’s estate. The artwork portrays a young female subject dressed in a black gown, accompanied by a white ruffled collar and a white cap. It is painted on an oak panel and set in a hand-carved gold Dutch frame.
Uncovering a Possible Rembrandt
Veilleux said he recognised Rembrandt’s style when he first saw the portrait. Although the painting is unsigned, Veilleux said that was not necessarily unusual for Rembrandt’s work. A tag affixed to the reverse side of the frame credited the portrait to the artist and noted its exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art back in 1970.
The museum could not confirm the painting’s exhibition history. Maggie Fairs, who acts as a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, mentioned via an email sent to The New York Times that the institution looked into the assertion, though the passing years made it hard to verify if and when the portrait actually hung there.
The artwork had reportedly been in private family ownership since the 1920s. How the piece made its journey from the Netherlands—where Rembrandt was active during the 1600s—to a Maine farmhouse loft remains a mystery. “That’s part of the mystery,” Veilleux remarked, adding: “It’s a good thing we found it. Anyone else wouldn’t have known what to do with it.”
Valuation and Authentication Debates
Mark Winter, an art authentication expert who has spent more than two decades appraising artworks, including paintings attributed to Rembrandt, noted that the portrait’s worth could climb significantly higher should its connection to the master be verified. Winter told The New York Times in a phone interview: “The person who bought the painting for $1.4 million already got a great bargain. The value of this painting is probably in the area of $15 million.”
He additionally remarked that the canvas bore striking similarities to Rembrandt’s style and that the portrayed girl shared features with other young women featured in the master’s portraiture. However, the portrait’s attribution has not been established as definitive in the information available. According to The Mauritshuis museum located in The Hague, the Dutch Golden Age creator crafted a higher volume of etchings and drawings than canvases, with roughly 300 paintings officially credited to him.
The Maine portrait is not the first painting to attract renewed attention after its attribution to Rembrandt was reconsidered. In 2018, Dutch art dealer Jan Six announced he had identified a 17th-century canvas previously credited to the Netherlandish School as an authentic creation by Rembrandt. Another piece, The Adoration of the Kings, fetched nearly $14 million throughout 2023 once specialists determined it was crafted by the Dutch master. Its value had been estimated at $17,000 two years earlier, before the attribution changed.
Winter noted that his authentication firm gets roughly two to three image submissions weekly from individuals hoping to verify if their pieces are authentic Rembrandts, a trend that has persisted for roughly twenty years. “But we don’t discover new paintings by Rembrandt every day,” he said.
