Beautiful Honthorst fragment coming up at Sotheby’s once attributed to Leyster
The auction house estimates ‘Head of a Smiling Girl’ at US$60,000-US$80,000. Its catalogue records two earlier Christie’s sales that erroneously attributed the painting as Judith Leyster.
Sotheby’s has listed ‘Head of a Smiling Girl’ as a work by Gerrit van Honthorst and as Guaranteed Property in its Magnum Opus Evening Auction, with an estimate of US$60,000-US$80,000. The catalogue history shows Christie’s catalogued the painting as Judith Leyster at anonymous London sales in 1927 and 1951 before Held recognised it as Honthorst.
Sotheby’s describes the work as oil on canvas, ‘a fragment’, clearly of a much grander composition. The presence of the head of Mars makes one ponder how the much larger composition would have been realised - the 1625 Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich drawing offering a glimpse.
Sotheby’s provenance begins with the Christie’s sale of 16 December 1927, lot 107, after which it says the painting was acquired by Frank T. Sabin, Ltd., London. Following the 1951 Christie’s sale, lot 137, the listing records acquisition by ‘Werner’, then ownership with Arcade Gallery in London in 1953-1954 and David M. Koester Gallery in New York by 1959 until 1966.
By 1966, the painting was with the art historian and collector Julius S. Held (1905-2002), according to the listing. Held’s estate sold it at Christie’s New York on 27 January 2009, in ‘The Scholar’s Eye: Property from the Julius Held Collection, Part I’, lot 36. Sotheby’s says it was then acquired by the present collector, whose identity is not given.
The listing also records exhibitions at Arcade Gallery in 1953, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in summer 1977, and Worcester Art Museum in 1979. Its bibliography includes J. R. Judson’s 1959 study of Honthorst and the 1999 catalogue raisonné by Judson and R. Ekkart.
