The Gems I Would Have Taken Home

Claude Monet Jan van de Capelle Aelbert Cuyp Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp Anthonie de Lorme Season Opens Softly at Christie’s The Purveyor of Modern Life Also This Month

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The field of collecting keeps narrowing down as art supplies from the past irrevocably dwindle in proportion to ever-soaring interest in art.

Old Masters remain the one area where marvelous coups can be made by those who love painting and have an eye that recognizes masterpieces, even if these are not flagged by famous signatures.

In contrast to Impressionist and modern art, only a small minority of the countless painters from past centuries have been studied in depth, and, among these, an even smaller minority have had their oeuvres recorded in catalogues raisonnés.

Newly discovered pictures pop up all the time, overlooked in the dark corners of rarely visited European mansions or passed on from generation to generation in families not particularly versed in art who had never thought of submitting them to an expert.

Artists who never made it to world fame sometimes produced masterpieces, and these can be acquired at prices that still seem astonishingly low.

At the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), held as usual in the southern Netherlands city of Maastricht during the second week of March, two paintings by Anthonie de Lorme leapt off the walls on the stands of two London dealers, who, by sheer coincidence, have galleries within 50 yards of each other. If de Lorme had not signed much of his work, art historians would dub him the Master of the Mystery Churches. The Rotterdam artist painted countless interiors of ecclesiastical buildings in the sober classical style of the 1620s and 1630s. Partly bathed in beautiful light surging from invisible sources that leave large pockets of shadow, they invariably have side galleries in a slanting perspective, with characters in the distance enigmatically engaged in purposeful dialogue or steeped in contemplation of sights unseen. One very large church interior of dazzling beauty was offered by dealer Johnny Van Haeften at just under $800,000. I would have settled for it like a shot if money were no object. It was not even expensive — think of the miserable daub that this kind of money would secure in Impressionist and modern art.

With or without lots of money, I would have made a dash for a small, exquisite view done by de Lorme that was displayed by Rafaël Valls. The price, about $25,000, was a joke. I would also have gone for the portrait of a young girl signed in 1636 by Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp, the father of the famous Aelbert Cuyp. The sitter stares, wide-eyed, with a mix of innocence and soft distress that places the likeness among the great psychological studies of Dutch portraiture. Unsurprisingly, the Jacob Cuyp was featured in a retrospective held at the Dordrecht Museum in the summer of 2002. The asking price? A laughable €38,000 ($50,000). One hears that the museum reserved it, which is only natural as Dordrecht was the artist’s hometown. Sadly, it could not muster the funds. Perhaps they should have begging bowls at the door.

If international museum directors might be inclined to dismiss Cuyp’s portrait as not important enough, they would hesitate to make such a pronouncement about a sublime picture of the Dutch school offered at Maastricht. The seaside view by Jan van de Cappelle, arguably the greatest marine painter in 17th-century Europe, is unusual for the Amsterdam master, who is most admired for his aptitude at catching the magic of hazy sunlight over quiet waters. Here, two sailing boats in a calm are reflected in the mirror-like surface of the water, while heavy black clouds hanging over the sea create a threatening atmosphere.

Van Haeften’s asking price was just over €1 million ($1.32 million). You would expect major world institutions looking for a masterpiece in impeccable condition by a towering figure of Dutch painting in the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer to have pounced on the van de Cappelle. They did not, making one wonder, as so often, just how their buying policies are determined. Too late. The van de Cappelle, which was under negotiation to a collector at the time of this writing, would have been my first choice in Old Masters anywhere this season.