£8m Rediscovered Rembrandt Sees Out London’s Lively Summer Sales

A rediscovered painting by Rembrandt van Rijn led Sotheby’s Old Master and 19th Century Paintings and Sculpture Evening Auction in London on 1 July, selling for its low estimate of £8 million (all figures with fees) after a years-long restoration and scholarly reassessment brought the work back into the artist’s oeuvre.

Let the Little Children Come Unto Me, painted circa 1627 when Rembrandt was in his early twenties and working in Leiden, had long been obscured beneath layers of overpaint and varnish that altered both its appearance and attribution. Acquired at a regional German auction in 2014 as the work of a follower of Rembrandt, the painting underwent extensive conservation and technical analysis before being recognised as an autograph work by the Dutch master.

The large biblical composition captures Christ welcoming children while their parents gather around him. Beyond its subject, the painting offers a rare glimpse into Rembrandt’s early working process. 

Executed from the background forwards, the foreground figures remain in an unfinished, sketch-like state, revealing how the young artist built the composition in successive stages. Many of the figures were modelled on people from Rembrandt’s own circle, including his father, while the artist himself appears in the upper background, meeting the viewer’s gaze.

Art historians have also linked the painting to theological debates in Holland during the early 17th century. Its emphasis on Christ blessing children has been interpreted against contemporary Calvinist discussions surrounding the salvation of children who died in infancy.

While the Rembrandt—which went under the hammer with a guarantee—was the auction’s most talked-about lot, it did not achieve the evening’s top figure. That honour was reserved for The Hamilton Laocoön (1817), a life-sized Neoclassical bronze by Auguste-Jean-Marie Carbonneaux, which achieved £13.62 million, becoming the second-highest priced pre-modern sculpture ever to sell at auction.

Other highlights of the evening included Sandro Botticelli and workshop’s The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist, which sold for £2.53 million. One of only two known versions of the artist’s famous Madonna del Roseto composition, the devotional tempera panel depicts the Virgin, Christ Child and the young Saint John the Baptist gathered within a blooming rose garden—a traditional symbol of purity in Renaissance art. 

Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Village Scene with Peasants Carousing and Dancing around a Maypole realised £3.02 million. Arguably one of the finer examples of the artist’s best-known independent compositions, Brueghel scholar Georges Marlier suggested that it clearly expressed Brueghel’s own personality. The painting is distinguished by its lively depiction of villagers celebrating around a towering maypole.

The evening concluded a strong summer season in London, distinguished by an unusual concentration of museum-quality consignments across the city’s major auction houses, and a subsequent heavy focus on the top of the market. At Sotheby’s, the record-breaking Masterpieces from The Lewis Collection became the most valuable single-owner collection ever sold in Europe, while Claude Monet’s Nymphéas (1907) realised £40.76 million, the highest price for an Impressionist work sold at auction in Europe in more than a decade.

Meanwhile, at Christie’s, the Old Masters Evening Sale and The Exceptional Sale: Masterworks Across Cultures realised a combined totao of £50.7 million. The sales were led by Sir Thomas Lawrence’s Portrait of Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington (1820–1822), which sold for £9.67 million (a new auction record for the artist) and an Egyptian Limestone Pair Statue (2400–2300 BCE) from the Hovingham Hall Collection, which realised £3.71 million.

Christie’s single-owner sale of works from the controversial Anita and Poju Zabludowicz Collection totalled a comfortable £15.4 million with fees, while Phillips staged the first major auction of David Hockney’s work following the artist’s death, led by The Only One with Waves (1991), which realised £2.42 million.