"Can you tell me the origin of these two paintings?"

Chen Rui asked the stall owner casually. When he mentioned this, the stall owner suddenly became excited.

"These two paintings were brought back from Europe by my grandfather, and they have been kept in my private museum ever since..."

Good guy, this guy has a lot of background, right?

Is there a private museum at home? Chen Rui had to look at this person carefully.

Not to mention, this man is a famous brand from top to bottom.

Although the clothes were a little worn, they were packed very neatly.

Very different from other sloppy stall owners.

It can be seen that he has a very good tutor and his background is not ordinary.

This man's name is Jesse, an antique dealer from Arizona.

When I was a child, my family was in business, and the success of his family can be traced back to his grandfather.

It turns out that during World War II, his grandfather was an American soldier and fought in Europe for several years.

After World War II, he was stationed in the Netherlands. At that time, his grandfather collected many local treasures from Germany and the Netherlands and brought them back to the United States.

For example, these two paintings were collected at that time.

His family also has his own brewing business in his hometown in Arizona.

It was doing well at one time and they even had their own private museum.

These two paintings were in the museum's collection back then.

Unfortunately, after his father took over the family business, he made several wrong decisions.

As a result, the family business got worse and worse. In the past few years, it finally couldn't hold on and went bankrupt.

And he had to become an antique dealer and started the road of selling off his property...

Of course, this guy would never admit that he made a living by selling off his family's property.

But as soon as Chen Rui guessed, he knew what was going on with him.

"Wow, I have to say, these two paintings look really similar!"

"If they were really all works by Rembrandt, I guess you wouldn't have to be so miserable."

After listening to the man explain his origin, Chen Rui took another look at the two paintings and sighed.

In fact, he just took the opportunity to test, but he didn't expect that Jesse didn't have any intentions.

Hearing what he said, he also let out a long sigh: "Who says it's not the case!"

"At that time, my grandfather regarded these two paintings as authentic works of Rembrandt and hung them in the museum for decades."

"Unexpectedly, it was later identified as a fake, which made my grandfather lose face."

"It also made me a local joke..."

Jesse shook his head helplessly as he spoke.

Come to think of it, his grandfather must have shown off to everyone he met that he had two genuine Rembrandts.

Maybe someone else even offered a high price, but he didn't agree to take action.

But in the end it was identified as a fake painting, and no one would feel better about it.

As for the local people, they will definitely add insult to injury and make sarcastic remarks.

Who made you like playing music so much before?

To talk about why this painting was identified as a fake, we have to start with Rembrandt’s personal experience.

Rembrandt can be said to be the most outstanding painter in Dutch history.

Although Dutch oil painting is known as the Three Masters, these are just the three masters forced by later generations.

In terms of status in the world, the other two are actually not comparable to Rembrandt.

Rembrandt's position even plays a decisive role in the history of international oil painting.

Because his composition of light and shadow, his use of light, and his elaboration of portraits in his paintings are all outstanding.

Countless painters of later generations imitated his techniques before starting their oil painting careers.

This old man was a famous painter in the Netherlands in the 17th century, and he caught up with him at a good time.

At that time, the Netherlands was in the golden age of sea coachmen, and the country was very wealthy.

Therefore, people also like to let painters paint their portraits and pass them down to future generations.

So Rembrandt became famous during this time, because he himself was very good at portrait painting.

And the fees he charges after he becomes famous are naturally very expensive.

Back then, when he painted portraits for others, he charged 500 guilders for a painting. At that time, a villa in Amsterdam only cost 1,500 guilders.

It can be seen that this old man was much more prosperous back then.

But this guy is not only great at painting, he also has a great business acumen.

When he painted portraits of others, he would often use some tricks to leave some flaws in certain places that the owner could not accept.

In this way, the owner will ask him to make changes again.

So he changed a painting for someone else and had to charge a quarter of the painting price, which was 125 guilders.

As a result, his reputation became worse and worse, and fewer and fewer people asked him to paint self-portraits.

However, this old man did not change his past.

His next operation, viewed from today's perspective, is just four words:

o zuo

o dai !

His reputation has become bad, and fewer and fewer clients come to him to paint self-portraits.

And this Rembrandt was also a little expert at committing suicide, so he turned around and opened an oil painting training class and started recruiting students from all over.

What he did next was even more surprising.

After he accepted students who paid a lot of money, he actually asked the students to do ghost paintings for him.

When it comes to this operation, this guy is definitely the originator of the shooter world.

Although there was less business for him to paint self-portraits at that time, he was well-known after all.

There are quite a few galleries who place orders with him and seek his paintings, as well as other major patrons.

But this guy actually started taking orders crazily in order to make more money.

Then ask his students to help him with his homework.

After the students finish the painting, they directly sign their names on the painting.

It was okay at first, and the news was kept tightly under wraps.

But as the saying goes, if you don't want others to know, don't do it unless you do it yourself.

There is no airtight wall in this world. The fact that he hired a gunman to write for him quickly spread out.

As a result, many of his regular customers canceled their orders from him in anger.

Just like that, this guy soon became impoverished and finally declared bankrupt.

After that, it took more than ten years before he died of depression.

And precisely because he had hired a ghostwriter before, he had a lot of paintings handed in for him.

Therefore, there are many paintings handed down by him later on.

As early as before World War II, someone had made statistics. At that time, there were more than a thousand of Rembrandt's handed down paintings.

These paintings are scattered all over the world.

After World War II, the Dutch National Academy of Sciences established a special "Rembrandt Research Group".

The mission of this group is to travel around the world to study and identify Rembrandt's paintings.

Identify which paintings are genuine works by Rembrandt and which ones were ghostwritten by his students.

As a result, this research has lasted for decades. The entire project started in 1968 and has not yet ended.

Because there are many museums and collectors who know the mission and purpose of this research group.

I simply didn’t dare to bring the Rembrandt works I had collected to them for appraisal.
Chapter completed!