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259
Rembrandt, Portrait of an unknown scholar (also known as
‘The Auctioneer’), 1658, canvas 108 x 85 cm. New York, Metropolitan
Museum of Art. HdG 756; Br. 294; Bauch 422; Gerson 340; Br./Gerson
294; Tümpel A94 (as from the circle of Rembrandt); see also Art and
Autoradiography pp. 88-92 (as by a follower of Rembrandt); Sonnenburg in
R. not R. I pp. 20-21 and figs. 52-53, 58-59 no. 32 (as by a follower of
Rembrandt); Liedtke 2007 pp. 763-766 (as by a follower of Rembrandt)
Inscription: worked into the suggested text on the visible page of the openfolded book or manuscript held by the sitter ‹Rembrandt f. 1658›
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The title commonly given to this work, The Auctioneer, is misleading. It comes from the groundless suggestion
that the subject portrayed could be Pieter Haringh, the man whose cousin Thomas was involved as auctioneer
in the completion of Rembrandt’s bankruptcy (see Doc. 1657/6). Attributes in the background – a classical bust, a
column – as well as the beret the man wears and the manuscript or book in his hand – all support the more
likely surmise that this is a portrait of an unknown scholar.
The remarkable history of the disattribution of this painting since c. 1979 needs to be related in some detail.
It is an instructive example of those cases where Rembrandt scholars, and even the custodians concerned, have
obstinately maintained that the work could not be from the hand of Rembrandt, without giving valid arguments
to support their position and in the face of good evidence to the contrary (see also, for instance, 32 , 221 , and
266 ).
In this case, parts of that history are fairly easily followed because Walter Liedtke, in his 2007 catalogue,
provided a chronological survey of all published opinions on this painting – as well as the recorded oral
comments by visiting art historians and others. Moreover, the painting was dealt with in both volumes of the
Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt publication of the Metropolitan Museum from 1995. At several points in Vol. I of that
publication, written by Hubert von Sonnenburg, the painting is discussed in relation to technical and material
investigations.
This painting had long been accepted as an autograph work by Rembrandt. Not only is it signed and dated
in a manner not unusual for the artist; in its execution it also shows numerous characteristics of Rembrandt’s
late style. Following their investigation of the painting in 1976 Bruyn and Haak of the RRP were convinced of
the painting’s authenticity and in oral communications said as much to Liedtke (Liedtke 2007 p. 764 note 2).
However, the secure status of The Auctioneer in the Rembrandt canon was abruptly terminated in 1979 when
the guest curator of Dutch Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum, Professor Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann,
rejected the painting as a work by Rembrandt. In 1966 Begemann had still accepted The Auctioneer as one of
Rembrandt’s portraits of unidentified sitters. Liedtke noted in 1979 that ‘he (Begemann) rejects the painting as
by Rembrandt, comparing its technical qualities with those of the Aristotle.’
When I much later asked Begemann if he remembered what or who had made him change his mind in 1979,
he referred to the New York restorer Louis de Wild (1909-1988), son of the Dutch restorer Carel de Wild (18701922). We met both in Chapter I of this book. Experienced restorers were in those days considered to be the
experts to whom connoisseurs deferred because of their long involvement with old paintings as artifacts (see also
pp. 9/10 with the correspondence between Gerson and the restorer William Suhr). Louis de Wild was a good
friend of Begemann and Von Sonnenburg, both of whom held his judgment and experience in the field of
Dutch 17th-century paintings in the highest regard.
Begemann’s arguments against an attribution of The Auctioneer to Rembrandt are to be found in the entry on
the painting that he and Maryan Ainsworth contributed to Art and Radiography. The following comments from
that entry are unrelated to the autoradiographic images, but rather concern aspects of the paint surface itself.
‘Of particular note is the absence of the characteristic build-up of brushwork for lighting effects in the
background. Instead, spatial definition is attempted by an arrangement of summarily defined objects – the
ancient bust, a curtain, and a column. Previously, a window at the upper left was also included, perhaps in
the place of the column. Such a confusion of objects in the background is unusual for Rembrandt, who
mastered the definition of color and light through well-integrated but varied brushwork.’
These remarks were apparently added by Begemann, as they seem to derive from a comparison of The Auctioneer
with the Aristotle 228 in the same museum. In the latter work the treatment of light in the background is much
further worked out than in the present painting, and the background is less complex than in The Auctioneer. But
quite apart from the question of Rembrandt’s artistic intentions, it should also be borne in mind that each of
the two paintings must have had a significantly different raison d’être. The Aristotle from 1653 is an ambitious
history piece painted for an experienced art-lover already in possession of a large collection of works by artists
of repute, whereas The Auctioneer is one of the portraits that Rembrandt produced five years later in the wake
of his bankruptcy. In this portrait some of the sitter’s attributes, allusions to his learning, are summarily indicated
in the background. The sitter is more soberly dressed than Aristotle, such that the distribution of light is less
determined by the nature of the costume.
In its genesis The Auctioneer shows several characteristics of Rembrandt’s way of working. At the end of the
text in Art and Autoradio­graphy attention is drawn to a number of repentirs: the contours of the sitter’s hat and the
bust were changed slightly, and the hands and manuscript pages were moved further away from the body; the
curtain was moved to the right. This type of repentir is typical of Rembrandt (compare the Portrait of Catharina
Hoogsaet 258 , the Coppenol-sketch 260 and the Portrait of a man with arms akimbo 261 , all portraits from the
same period).
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It was Begemann’s verdict which seemed to seal the painting’s fate. The restorer Hubert von Sonnenburg in
his book for the Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt exhibition project, characterized The Auctioneer as a
‘brilliant one-time exercise by an independent artist rather than an imitation by a pupil working in
Rembrandt’s studio.’
It must have been the scale and the complexity of the painting which led Von Sonnenburg – and subsequently
Liedtke too – to reject the possibility that this could be a work by one of the members of Rembrandt’s studio.
From then on it was implicitly assumed that the painting’s author – sometimes referred to as the ‘imitator’,
sometimes as the ‘follower of Rembrandt’ – was not someone who was considered to have been active in
Rembrandt’s workshop. Von Sonnenburg’s a priori conviction that The Auctioneer was the work of this hypothetical
‘imitator’ led to remarkable complications in the question of its attribution, all the more surprising since it puts
into question Von Sonnenburg’s belief in the value of the neutron activation autoradiographic research. In R.
not R. I, he confronted two reproduced autoradiographic images in which one can see the distribution of
(phosphorus-containing) bone black mostly in the sketched underpainting. The first image is of the Metropolitan’s
Self-portrait by Rembrandt from 1660 282 (figs. 1-2), the second of The Auctioneer (figs. 3-4) (R. not R. I pp. 20-21).
The accompanying text is worthy of a contortionist:
Fig. 1. Detail of 282
Fig. 2. Neutr. Act. Autoradiogram of fig. 1.
Fig. 4. Neutr. Act. Autoradiogram of fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Detail of 259
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‘When the autoradiograph of the self-portrait (…) is compared to that of the imitative Auctioneer, the heads are
certainly more similar than dissimilar, and both faces show the same kind of faint preparatory sketching. This
particular comparison, which may slight the strength of the useful method of autoradiography, demonstrates
the ease with which it can lead to false conclusions.’
Because Von Sonnenburg had already taken for granted (without any valid argument) that The Auctioneer was an
imitation, he felt forced to deny the value of the evidence which he himself had established, viz. that the two
autoradiographic images showed striking similarities. So, rather than re-examine Louis de Wild’s/Begemann’s
verdicts and his own a priori assumption, he asserts that it is the conclusion from the evidence that is unreliable.
Von Sonnenburg continues his attack:
‘The most convincing arguments for the imitative character of The Auctioneer are based on an examination
of the technique of the paint layers that overlie the sketch. A comparative study of the heavy impasto in the
face of The Auctioneer shows that it is markedly different from that of every authentic Rembrandt.’ (figs. 5-6)
(R. not R. I p. 54).
Fig. 5. Detail of 259
Fig. 6. X-ray of fig. 5.
This is an audacious claim, since it is hardly likely that Von Sonnenburg could have investigated X-radiographs
of all late portraits by Rembrandt with attention to the nature of the impasto. In studying the X-radiograph of
the face of The Auctioneer (fig. 6), moreover, one finds that Von Sonnenburg seriously exaggerates when he
writes:
‘The handling of the heavily built-up impasto in this face is by itself a valid argument against Rembrandt’s
authorship. The imitator did not model with a loaded brush; instead he piled up his impasto with repeated,
mostly corrective applications, producing a mask-like effect.’
In fact, it may be argued to the contrary: the mere fact that the modelé of the face clearly shows in the X-radiograph
– a consequence of differences in thickness and/or tone of the lead white-containing paint (the thicker it is, the
lighter it shows up) – demonstrates that the author of the work really did ‘model with a loaded brush’. Moreover,
he did so in a manner that one encounters in numerous paintings by Rembrandt (and in the X-radiographs
taken from them) – the thickest paint in the brightest areas. In portraits, the quantity of lead white applied in
this process can of course vary, as it may take more or less work with the brush and paint to successfully capture
a sitter’s likeness. Von Sonnenburg’s remark about ‘impasto with repeated, mostly corrective application’ is an
apt description, especially in the case of a portrait. Probably for the same reason one finds conspicuous variation
in the quantity of lead white in the faces of Rembrandt’s late self-portraits. (see, for example, Corpus IV 8 and 13, 15
and 18, 27 and 28).
Time and again in his analysis Von Sonnenburg asserts that this is the work of an imitator whilst nowhere
presenting any real evidence that the painting originated outside Rembrandt’s workshop.
Von Sonnenburg published his ideas in 1995. Liedtke, in his 2007 catalogue (p. 765), included as the most
recent information the results of technical material investigations that had been brought to the attention of the
Metropolitan Museum two years earlier: viz. that the ground underneath The Auctioneer turned out to be a socalled quartz ground, the type of ground which was shown by Karin Groen’s thorough and extensive
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investigation of painters’ grounds used in Amsterdam between 1640 and 1670 (Corpus IV pp. 318-334 and Table IV
p. 672) to occur only with Rembrandt and in paintings in his style which, for various reasons, are thought to have
originated in his workshop. And yet, despite including the information, Liedtke simply ignored this essential
evidence.
‘Considering how little is known about the artist’s [Rembrandt’s] immediate circle from the mid-1650s
onward, it would be unwise to insist on an origin [of 259 ] outside his workshop. However, the bravura
with which passages of the painting have been dashed off bears little resemblance to the studious approach
found in pictures such as the Head of Christ [Br. 626]. Contemporaneous imitation at some remove from the
master seems all the more plausible in the case of fashionable portraiture.’
Like Begemann, Liedtke took his main argument for disattributing the painting from a comparison between
The Auctioneer and the Aristotle. In his case, he compared the left sleeve of the Aristotle and the right sleeve of The
Auctioneer and that of the Flora 269 , similarly in the Metropolitan. (One cannot help noting that during the
Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt project – a very hurried project designed to fill an unexpected gap in the museum’s
exhibition schedule – the works from Rembrandt’s oeuvre that were used for comparison consisted mainly of
paintings in the Metropolitan Museum.) With reference to the major differences in execution between The
Auctioneer and the Aristotle Liedtke concluded:
‘The painter of The Auctioneer imitated the surface effects of Rem­brandt’s late manner but not its descriptive
qualities’.
It is a common tendency among connoisseurs to analyze compar­able details (in this case a comparison of
sleeve with sleeve) in order to produce plausible arguments for or against an attribution. It is, however, not
always the best method, as the ‘old RRP’ had to discover, for deciding for or against an attribution (see for
instance 171 vs 181 ). Certainly with the late Rembrandt this is a risky approach, since Rembrandt subordinated
the degree of elaboration and lighting of the elements of his images to the pictorial role the relevant elements
play in the painting as a whole. In the Aristotle the left sleeve plays a major role, while the left hand is subordinate;
whereas the converse is the case with the right sleeve and hand of The Auctioneer. The highest light on the shirt
sleeves in the present painting is introduced on the opposite, left sleeve of the Auctioneer, which is only partially
visible – an exceptionally refined solution which is typical of Rembrandt’s variable ways as a painter. In The
Auctioneer, however, this solution demands that the sleeve in the foreground should be given only general form
and should be placed in subdued light since Rembrandt as a rule maintained a strict regime with regard to the
hierarchy in the lighting and detailing within a painting. Comparison between the sleeves of The Auctioneer and
those of the Aristotle therefore does not provide a valid means of arriving at a judgment over the authenticity of
the present painting.
Liedtke dismisses the signature on the painting as false; yet he provides no evidence or argument to support
his assertion of ‘… the false signature and date, which are unexpectedly located on the folio’ (R not R II p. 116).
This casual dismissal of the inscription on the painting was based on no research, but it is of a piece with the
current tendency to distrust a priori the signatures on Rembrandt’s paintings – certainly in the case of paintings
on canvas (see p. 65). The tendency to disregard signatures as potential evidence is regrettable, as it is clear that
Rembrandt almost always provided his paintings and etchings intended for sale with a signature. The signature
on the present painting is so placed that it seems to constitute part of the text on the doubled back page of the
book (or manuscript) held by the subject of the portrait: Rembrandt’s name and the date 1658 are incorporated
in the succession of roughly indicated lines of text on this page (fig. 7). The obliquely running signature is thus
adapted to the perspective distortion of the page.
Perhaps that is why Liedtke considered it to be ‘unexpectedly located’. But such a location for a Rembrandt
signature is by no means as unexpected as he implies. In c. 40 paintings Rembrandt placed his monograms or
signatures on separate objects or clearly distinguishable architectural elements; in eight of these he placed it on
a book or piece of paper in the image. In four – five, if this painting is included – of these cases he took more
or less account of the perspective distortion of the relevant paper or book 14 , 64a , 72 , 89 . Where other
objects were the recipients of the signature, such as the ship’s rudder in Christ in the storm on the Lake of Galilea
105 , or the step in the Berlin Susanna and the elders 213 , and on at least three comparable occasions, he adapted
the placing of the inscription to the perspective and spatial representation of the object concerned 12 , 194 ,
245 .
Examination of the paint surface of The Auctioneer in situ yielded no evidence that this signature <Rembrandt
/ f.1658.> had at some stage been strengthened with new paint – or at most, only the very last letters of
Rembrandt’s name. Calligraphically the signature fits among other signatures of the late Rembrandt while the
tone of the paint with which the signature is applied is identical to that of the lines suggested on the page.
Moreover, the ageing of the paint of the signature corresponds to that of the paint layer on which it is applied.
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Fig. 7. Detail with signature of 259
In short, there is no reason to reject the inscription as false – unless, of course, the painting as a whole were
not only false but an exceptionally skilful and singularly well-informed imitation; and in view of the fact that it
is painted on a quartz ground, that can be ruled out entirely.
When one turns to the use of paint in the image as a whole, given the painting’s normal wear and tear, one
finds again no reason to doubt its authenticity. The colour scheme of the lit back of the hand is executed with
extreme subtlety with cool tones for the knuckles, pink-yellowish tones for the bottom-most knuckles and
tendons, and a group of parallel hatchings at the wrist. The cas­ually placed, small light on the knuckle of the
left hand’s index finger is remarkable for its effectiveness. The indication of the pages exe­cuted with grazing
lines of the brush at the edge of the manuscript is characteristic of Rembrandt’s way of working (see 198 , 216
, 289 ). The small ochre lines subtly indicating the leather cover track with the displacement of the doubled
over, upper edge of the book. There can be little doubt that Rembrandt is the artist who here depicts a leatherbound book or manuscript (see also 242 and 294 ).
The same wealth of variation in the peinture, applied time and again in the rendering of material and its
placing in the space and the light, is to be seen in the costume, and in the face where slightly redder tones are
applied than the cooler tones used elsewhere. Then there is the red light that one often sees with Rembrandt
on the underside of the lit wing of the nose. The way in which the mouth is painted is free and subtle, partly
determined by chance. There is an audacious small lick below the moustache, above the upper lip’s cupid’s
bow (compare Venus’ mouth in 251 ). A small fleeting light on the upper eyelid indicates that this is rather
heavy, so that pupil and iris are largely shadowed. This is why there is no gleam placed on the eye; one sees
this elsewhere in Rembrandt’s portraits with figures whose eyes are strongly shadowed by the upper eyelids.
Over the forehead by the temple, above the lit eye can be seen partially painted out indications of hanging
strands of hair, an aspect of the coiffure of his male sitters that Rembrandt indicated sketchily in other portraits
as well (see for example 310 and 312 ). Another feature typical for Rembrandt is the differentiated ‘sfumato’
along the various contours in the painting (see Painter at Work, p. 188).
In summary, when the case proposed by Begemann, Von Sonnenburg and Liedtke for the disattribution of
this painting from Rembrandt is critically examined, one finds a distortion or disregard of evidence and invalid
or inadequate argumentation, which cannot justify such a drastic decision. My proposal is therefore that the
painting should be re-admitted to the Rembrandt canon.
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