Old Masters, New World by Cynthia Saltzman

Author:Cynthia Saltzman [Saltzman Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440633959
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

The “greatest Rembrandt” was a large, late ­self-­portrait, signed and dated 1658, when the artist was ­fifty-­two, and at what many believed to be the height of his powers. For almost one hundred years, the portrait had been in the collections of the Earls of Ilchester, who had hung the canvas in its gilded frame over the mantel in the drawing room of their vast ­house at Melbury Park, their countryseat in Dorset, one hundred miles southwest of London.

For four months Otto Gutekunst had been negotiating with Giles ­Fox-­Strangways, the 6th Earl of Ilchester, to acquire the Rembrandt portrait and completed the transaction that day. Gutekunst and Carstairs had agreed to invest in the picture ­together—as they often did with canvases that they otherwise could not afford. Together they paid 31,000 pounds or $155,000, a substantial sum, exactly equivalent to the 1904 operating bud­get of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The dealers risked their own capital, certain of the Rembrandt’s market value and betting on a high financial reward.

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