In 2020, This Drawing Was Worth $200—Now It’s Worth $1.44 Million

Art + AuctionsIn 2020, This Drawing Was Worth $200—Now It’s Worth $1.44 MillionOne art dealer’s meticulous digging led him to discover an extremely undervalued original Jan Lievens drawing

By Tim Nelson

June 27, 2022

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Jan Lievens (Dutch 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), ca. 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular).Photo: Courtesy of Marcin Muchalski of Diamond Shot Studio/Christopher Bishop Fine Art

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It’s the kind of moment an art dealer lives for: the discovery of a rare work tucked away in an otherwise average assortment of auction lots. Even rarer still is uncovering a massively undervalued drawing by a Dutch master that hadn’t been spotted in 132 years. That’s exactly the backstory of how Christopher Bishop got his hands on a drawing by 17th-century painter Jan Lievens from a small Massachusetts auction house in 2020, where it was initially valued between $200 and $300. By the end of this month, it could fetch somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.44 million back in Lievens’s homeland, the Netherlands.

The work is a formal portrait of Maarten Tromp, the commander of the Dutch Navy, who sat for the artist only a year before his death in a sea battle with the English. Over the centuries since, Tromp has been an icon of national pride in the Netherlands, even appearing on Dutch postage stamps while the country was under Nazi occupation at the height of World War II.

As befits a valuable piece mired in obscurity, the life of this Lievens drawing has been an interesting one. First used as the basis for oil paintings of Tromp, the drawing was the foundation for print reproductions, as it shows evidence of having been pinned onto an engraving plate. The ownership of this particular drawing was last shown at an 1888 auction in Frankfurt, with its whereabouts between then and 2020 quite unknown.

Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), ca. 1652/3, framed.

Considering that a second Lievens drawing of Tromp and an oil painting based on this particular drawing sit in the British Museum’s collection, it’s a mystery as to how it remained unaccounted for for so long. However, Christopher Bishop’s mid-pandemic digging through online auctions led him to the drawing, listed as “an unidentified gentleman, initialed I.L., and dated 1652” by Marion Antique Auction House.

Bishop’s knowledge that a J often resembled an I in 17th-century signatures gave him a hunch that he was onto something special. That suspicion was soon confirmed by the flurry of interest in the run-up to the October 2020 auction. With 15 potential bidders, the price shot up to $514,800 when all was said and done, even if Bishop wasn’t 100% sure that he’d purchased a genuine work when the gavel struck.

Luckily, some restoration work proved that Bishop’s faith was well-placed. Specifically, a highly unique watermark gave proof to the provenance of the paper drawing, as it featured the logo of a supplier that Lievans and his fellow Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt were known to have used around the time this drawing was dated.

Foolscap with seven-pointed collar watermark in Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular). Christopher Bishop Fine Art.

Photo: Courtesy of Marcin Muchalski of Diamond Shot Studio/Christopher Bishop Fine Art

“There’s no question in my mind that this is the portrait of admiral Tromp that was recorded in old collections but that had disappeared,” Gregory Rubinstein, head of Sotheby’s Old Masters Drawings Department in London, told The New York Times after having examined the work. “It’s a totally authentic and really important example of a Lievens portrait drawing.”

Now this Lievens is off to the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht, Netherlands, where it will stand out as one of the fair’s highlights. It could potentially sell at the fair for another million above what Bishop paid. Take it as a sign that even in an age of extensive curation, there’s still the odd hidden gem hiding away somewhere if you’re willing to look.

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