Rembrandt sells for £11 million at auction

Sotheby’s said it was a work ‘of great significance in Rembrandt’s early career’.

Adoration Of The Kings is one of only a few times that a narrative painting by the Dutch artist has been sold in recent decades, according to Sotheby’s. (Sotheby’s)

A work by Rembrandt Van Rijn has sold for around £11 million at a London auction.

Adoration Of The Kings is one of only a few times that a narrative painting by the Dutch artist has been sold in recent decades, according to Sotheby’s.

The auction house said the 1628 work – which depicts the three Kings visiting Jesus, Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem – sold for £10,965,300 including buyer’s premium.

It had previously been sold by Christie’s in Amsterdam, where it had been called the Circle and was sold for £737,260 including fees.

Sotheby’s said it conducted an eighth-month research programme before selling the item which found it was “a work of great significance in Rembrandt’s early career”.

The company then put it out with an estimate of between £10 million and £15 million.

A 1655 print by Rembrandt, called Christ Presented To The People, also sold for £508,000 during the sale event, Old Master & 19th Century Paintings.

Previously, in 2007, a painting called Apostle St James The Greater was sold for around £20 million by Sotheby’s and that same year the auction house saw a 1632 Portrait Of A Young Woman With A Black Cap fetch £7 million.

Also selling on Wednesday was a Portrait of Constance Gladys, Countess de Grey, who became the Marchioness of Ripon and was a patron of the arts and leading society figure during the 19th and 20th centuries, by American Edwardian painter John Singer Sargent.

It sold for £508,000 after being exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum last year.

British painter William Hogarth’s Falstaff also sold for £508,000.

The work of Sir John Falstaff, a fictional character who appears in the William Shakespeare plays Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, was last at auction in 1891, when it sold for £1,525.