OLD PAINTING

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 222, 20 August 1931, Page 4

OLD PAINTING

THOUGHT TO BE A REMBRANDT

A remarkable old painting, which is believed by its owner to be by Rembrandt, and which was recently sent to .London tor identification, was purchased for £3O at an auction mart a few years ago by the late Mr John West, proprietor of West’s Coffee Palace, Hindley Street, in Adelaide, where it hung for many years covering a flaw on the wall of the smoking room.

Mr West believed, until he died, that the painting was the work of Jean Baptiste Santerre, a seventeenth century painter, and in that view he was supported by Mr A. V. Adlam, an Adelaide painter and connoisseur, who five years ago prepared a report on the picture for Sir Joseph Duveen, the London dealer, to whom Mr West intended to send it for identification. The proposal to send it to London was dropped after the death of Mr West, but his widow found marks on the back of the canvas that resembled the signature of Rembrandt. If the picture is a genuine Rembrandt, it is expected to realise £50,000. If it is a Santerre, it is also valuable. The subject of the painting, which is seven feet by six feet, is “Susannah Before Her Accusers.”

Rembrandt, the most famous artist of the 17th century, painted “Susannah and the Elders” in 1641. The picture under this title, and attributed to him, is in the Louvre, in Paris. Santerre, the French painter of the same period, also painted this subject, and it is regarded as one of his best works. Great prices are realised to-day for any Rembrandt pictures. His “Man Holding Scabbard,” offered at the Holford sale in London in 1928, realised 48,000 guineas; and his “Man With Cleft Chin,” brought 44,000 guineas. Both were purchased by the Knoedlers, of New York, who have many American clients.