REMBRANDT VALUES.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1833, 20 August 1913, Page 3

REMBRANDT VALUES.

EXISTING CANVASES WORTH Measured by the .£19,000 given in London in June by Messrs. Duveen Bros, for the liembrandt "Batlisheba" from tho Steengracht Collection—not to speak of the .£IOO,OOO ransom paid by an Americu-n collector for Lord Lansdowne's "Mill"— what, asks the London "Morning Post," is likely to be the aggregate value of tho acknowledged works? Who .would venture, with theie prices as a basis for calculation, to estimate tho value of the great "Night Watch" at the R-yks M-usnim in Amsterdam, or of the superb collections of Rembrandt's paintings at the National Gallery, .tlio Louvre, the Hermitage, the Berlin, C'asseJ, and Dresden Galleries? In these six galleries alone thexo are 110 fewr than 130 examples of the supreme master's art. Reokoned onJy at .£50,000 each—an altogether inadequate valuation considering the importance and quality of moro than liailf of these works—thesa pictures alono would represent a total value of 500,000. But the number of works passed ljy Dr. Bode as being from Rembrandt's own brush amounts to well over 600, so that i 20,000,000 would be a moderate computation of their total value. To this would have to be added tho incalculable amount represented by the master's etchings and drawings, which, like the paintings, have risen in value by leaps and bounds. It has ceased to cause surprise for a rare state of a Rembrandt etching —a fow inches of printed surface—to fetch anything from -CIOOO to .62000 in tho open market.

It is a sad reflection that tho master himself had to end his (lajis in negket and abject poverty. When ho died, in October 1669, ho was reduced to _ such poverty that an inventory taken immediately after h,is death states _ explicitly that ho left no pronerty save his wTO-rins apparel of wool and linen, and the implements of his oraft. In the prime of liin life he hfld enjoyed a curtain- prosperity and his art had with a fair degree <yf appreciation. But soon after his deatli pictures from his brush could bo bought for a. few shillings apiece. Ono of his -grand-nephews, in a book puMisli«l in 1702, records the sntisfactorv fact that one of the despised Rembrandt portraits had "üboenueiiitly risen to elpyon florins, and t.h»it "now "a. few hundred florins would have to he sacrificed by oiiyono desirous to acquire ono of tlie-.e proud paintings." •