{"id":3182,"date":"2026-02-03T12:26:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T12:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/?p=3182"},"modified":"2026-02-03T12:26:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T12:26:45","slug":"a-rare-20-million-rembrandt-is-being-sold-at-auction-for-a-remarkable-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/?p=3182","title":{"rendered":"A Rare $20 Million Rembrandt Is Being Sold at Auction \u2013 for a Remarkable Reason"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Sotheby\u2019s prepares to auction Rembrandt\u2019s Young Lion Resting, collector Thomas Kaplan reveals why now is the right time to pass with the piece.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Young<\/div>\n

Estimated to sell for approximately $20 million at Sotheby\u2019s New York<\/a> on February 4, 2026, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn\u2019s Young Lion Resting<\/em> is widely regarded as one of the most important works on paper to come to market in decades. But for Thomas Kaplan \u2013 collector, conservationist, and investor — its value has never been purely monetary.<\/p>\n

\u201cCollecting, to me, has always been about passion,\u201d he exclusively tells Elite Traveler<\/em>. \u201cI fell in love with Rembrandt when I was six years old. That intense feeling has stayed with me my whole life.»<\/p>\n

See also: Inside The Inventive World of Meriem Bennani<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

When he and his wife Daphne acquired the piece in 2005, it marked a personal beginning. It was the first Rembrandt they ever owned \u2013 the foundation stone of what would become The Leiden Collection<\/a>, now comprising 17 paintings by the master and widely regarded as one of the most important private collections of seventeenth-century Dutch art in the world.<\/p>\n

\"thomas
Kaplan is the world’s largest private collector of\u00a0Rembrandt’s works \u00a9Sotheby’s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t take a genius to collect Rembrandt,\u201d Kaplan says with characteristic humility. \u201cIt takes a genius to be Rembrandt.\u201d Upon seeing Young Lion Resting<\/em> for the very first time,<\/em> he was \u201cmesmerized by the cat\u2019s eyes,\u201d before noticing the bold, expressive strokes. \u201cRembrandt had a singular ability to capture the soul of his sitters,\u201d he says. \u201cHere, he saw this lion, brought to Amsterdam as a novelty, as a sentient, noble being \u2013 not just a curiosity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As Kaplan explains, collecting for him at least, began by chance \u2013 «a way to be closer to a particular form of art that I had long admired.\u201d That impulse would go on to shape The Leiden Collection, which from its inception was never intended to be static, but a \u201cvehicle for public dissemination, scholarly research and, critically, cultural exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conceived as a \u201clending library\u201d, it has been built around the idea that great art belongs, ultimately, to the public realm. Since embarking on a global tour in 2017, works from the collection have been exhibited in more than 80 museums worldwide \u2013 from the Louvre in Paris<\/a> to national museums across China, Russia, the UAE, and the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Young
Young Lion Resting is regarded as of the greatest drawings by the artist to come to auction in half a century \u00a9Sotheby’s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sale of Young Lion Resting<\/em> coincides with another milestone: the 20th anniversary of Panthera, the wild cat conservation organization Kaplan co-founded with the late Dr Alan Rabinowitz in a bid \u201cto protect these magnificent creatures in the wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

The timing is deliberate. Over the past century, local lion populations have collapsed by more than 90 percent, falling from an estimated 200,000 to fewer than 30,000 today. \u201cI realized that the best possible legacy for this masterpiece,\u201d Kaplan says, \u201cis for it to quite literally empower the survival of the very species that inspired Rembrandt some 400 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a rare move, 100% of the proceeds from the sale will be donated to Panthera\u2019s global conservation efforts, demonstrating how Kaplan links art, history, and conservation in a way few collectors do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The decision to part with such seminal work feels countercultural, especially in an era where collection is often conflated with accumulation. But Kaplan explains that \u201cwhen Daphne and I collect, we don\u2019t feel that we \u2018own\u2019 these paintings. We think of ourselves as temporary baton holders in a very long relay race.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That ethos has shaped not only The Leiden Collection, but Kaplan\u2019s wider work and lifelong commitment to safeguarding endangered species. \u201cRight now, we are living through a moment where we must decide what kind of world we want to pass on to future generations. A world without Rembrandt would be spiritually impoverished,\u201d he says. \u201cJust as a world without the roar of a lion would be biologically bankrupt.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Sotheby\u2019s prepares to auction Rembrandt\u2019s Young Lion Resting, collector Thomas Kaplan reveals why now is the right time to pass with the piece.\u00a0 Estimated to sell for approximately $20 million at Sotheby\u2019s New York on February 4, 2026, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn\u2019s Young Lion Resting is widely regarded as one of the most important […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"","beyondwords_project_id":"","beyondwords_content_id":"","beyondwords_preview_token":"","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}