ART SENSATION

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 107, 19 April 1933, Page 3

ART SENSATION

A REMBRANDT FIND. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF. LONDON, April 6. Apropos of a report from Melbourne that the trustees of the Felton Bequest are considering the purchase for the Melbourne Gallery of a Rembrandt painting for £25,000, comes the story of the discovery of a Rembrandt in Welbeck Abbey. It was while he was cataloguing the Duke of Portland’s pictures in Welbeck Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, that Mr C. K. Adams, a member of the National Portrait Gallery' stall, noticed a dim and dusty picture inscribed “Rembrandt, by Himself.” The thick varnish obliterated any sign of the power of the workmanship and the qu'ality of the colour. Subsequent cleaning has wonderfully transformed the painting, and the general condition is now excellent. Sir Charles Holmes declares that no portrait shows Rembrandt in so gaunt and terrifying a mood us this battered fortress, the accessories having the incompleteness of a sketch. The portrait attains the massive impasto associated with Rembrandt’s mature style. The light falls upon emphatic passages like those depicting ‘ ‘ The Banquet of Claudius,” at- present in the Stockholm gallery, bearing date 1661. The portrait is analagous to the Louvre portrait of the painter, in which his face is similarly wasted. The signature on the Welbeck portrait is clearly a palimpsest, and probably is no older than the relining. The remains of the original signature, with the date faintly visible, show the ligurcs 166. The last figure is cither 0,5, or 8. Sir Charles Holmes considers that it must be either 1660 or 1668. “If we accept the latter it is difficult to reconcile the portrait.” he says, “with the others dated 1667 and 1669, showing different physical characteristics, like puffiness and white hair. “Rembrandt might have suffered illness in 1660, thus accounting for the haggardness shown in the Welbeck Abbey and Louvre portraits.” It has been supposed in Melbourne that the Rembrandt which is being negotiated for there may be a self portrait found some time ago in Scarborough, England, by a London art dealer, Mr A. F. Reyre.