Rembrandt for $500,000

With high excitement two U.S. museums this week are celebrating the acquisition of works by a painter who has always been a sound investment--the 17th century master of northern European painting, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. In both cases the prices were even higher than the excitement.

In Detroit the Institute of Arts has on display its newest (and sixth) Rembrandt, the small (8 1/2 by 6 1/2 in.) A Woman Weeping, donated by Henry Ford II, president of the Ford Motor Co., and his wife. Last year Mrs. Ford spotted the small Rembrandt in Manhattan's Rosenberg & Stiebel Inc., felt that it was "one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen." The Fords decided to buy it, paid an estimated $50,000, and made it their first gift to the Detroit museum.

As Rembrandts go, Woman Weeping is relatively unknown. It first came to public view in 1914 at a London auction, where it was bought by Berlin Banker Oskar Huldschinsky for -L-1,470 ($7,158.90 at the time), top Rembrandt price of the year. What makes the painting choice is that it dates from Rembrandt's early 50s, when he had risen by force of character above the shallows of his personal life to enter his last and greatest period. In Woman Weeping, his mistress and favorite model, Hendrickje Stoffels (who was censured repeatedly by the church elders for her life with Rembrandt), appears in a masterful psychological portrait depicting a woman caught during the fleeting moment when she has just managed to stifle her sobs. It may well be a study for a late Rembrandt version of Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery.

In Boston the Museum of Fine Arts announced its new double acquisition, matching portraits of the Rev. Johannes Elison and his wife, Maria Bockenolle, of Norwich, England, painted in 1634 during Rembrandt's early years as a successful portrait painter in Amsterdam. Boston Museum trustees used up the whole of their five-year-old William K. Richardson fund to pay for the pair of life-sized portraits, largest single purchase in the museum's 80-year-old history. The price: just under $500,000.

Boston Museum Director Perry Rathbone feels the money was well spent. Not only are the two paintings the only full-length portraits by Rembrandt now in the U.S., but, says Rathbone, "they seem particularly appropriate for Boston. The Rev. Johannes Elison and his wife were the same kind of Puritans that first came to Massachusetts, very Elder Brewsterish."

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