IF REMBRANDT HAD KNOWN
Two thousand one hundred guineas ■were paid a few weeks ago in a London saleroom for a small portrait by Rembrandt. This worked out at £4 19s 4d the square inch. Rembrandt would have been surprised (comments George Edinger in the ‘ Sunday Express ’). In his most flourishing days he thought himself lucky to get £25 for a portrait. When he went bankrupt in 1657 all his sketches and drawings were sold for £SOO. This is not a unique case. Vincent van Gogh, when he died in 1890, was too poor to afford to buy his paints. To-day his pictures fetch between £3,000. and £4,000. His friend, Gauguin, was glad to exchange canvases now worth £3,000 for a glass of beer. In the last six years Christopher Wood’s paintings, for which London dealers gave him £5. have risen to £3OO and more. On the other hand, a picture by Alma-Tadema worth oOOgs 40 years ago, would not fetch £5 today.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Star, Issue 22578, 20 February 1937, Page 7
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163IF REMBRANDT HAD KNOWN Evening Star, Issue 22578, 20 February 1937, Page 7
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