Sotheby's sets Record for Rembrandt Drawing with $18M 'Young Lion Resting'
Young Lion Resting, a masterwork by Rembrandt van Rijn, has sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $17,860,000, placing it among the most valuable Old Master Drawings to be sold at auction.
The price realised today establishes the work as the most valuable drawing by Rembrandt ever sold at auction. The proceeds of the auction will benefit Panthera, a charity devoted to the conservation of the world’s 40 species of wild cats, founded by Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan, his wife Daphne Recanati Kaplan and the late Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, and now chaired by the drawing’s co-owner, Jon Ayers.
Ahead of today’s sale, Young Lion Resting had been part of the renowned Leiden Collection, assembled by the Kaplans over more than two decades. The collection is widely regarded as one of the most important private holdings of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art in the world, encompassing no fewer than 17 paintings by Rembrandt. Offered during Sotheby’s Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries sale in New York, the drawing Young Lion Resting drew bids over the phone and in the room, before selling to a buyer in the room.
Main Image: Rembrandt Drawing 'Young Lion Resting'. Black chalk with white chalk heightening and grey wash on brown laid paper, 11.5 × 15 cm