Rembrandt painting found in Maine attic fetches $1.4 million at auction

A 17th-century Rembrandt painting found in an attic in Maine fetched $1.4 million in a record-breaking sale, auctioneers said Wednesday.

“Portrait of a Girl” went up for grabs during Thomaston Place Auction Galleries’ annual Summer Grandeur sale and three phone bidders aggressively sought the work that ultimately ended in the hands of an unnamed European collector on Aug. 24.

It was a record sale for the New England auction house, which called it a “once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”

“Out of all the phone bids I’ve handled, I never imagined I’d help close a deal for over a million dollars,” Zebulon Casperson, representing the winning European bidder, said in a statement released by the gallery. “It feels like a shared victory.”

Thomaston Place Auction Galleries founder Kaja Veilleux said the discovery was made during a routine appraisal visit to a private estate in Camden.

“We often go in blind on house calls, not knowing what we’ll find,” Veilleux said in statement from the gallery. 

“Portrait of a Girl” was among several heirlooms and antiques tucked away in that attic, the gallery said.

The work by Dutch master Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, the legendary artisan of the 1600s known simply as Rembrandt, was painted on a cradled oak panel and encased in a hand-carved frame.

A label on the work showed that was loaned to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1970 by then-owner Cary W. Bok, who lived in Camden.