The Plate MarkRembrandt · Bartsch 20

RQ-08 · Resolved

Which sale and lot was this sheet bought as in 2023?

DifficultylowOpened2026-08-12Updated2026-08-12

Why it matters

The auction catalogue entry is the most recent independent description of the object by someone who had it in their hands. It would give a professional cataloguer's reading of the state, the dimensions and the condition, and it may name a consignor or state a prior provenance. It is the shortest path to a second opinion on almost every open field.

What the record currently holds

Resolved. Bonhams, Fine Books and Manuscripts, sale 28358, lot 182, New York, online only, 24 April to 4 May 2023; receipt dated 17 May 2023. The lot page is publicly reachable at the URL recorded against EV-LOT-182. The catalogue entry gives the medium, the sheet dimensions, the condition and the state determination, and cites Bartsch 20 and New Hollstein 170. The consignor is not named.

Hypotheses

Rendered distinctly from findings on purpose. None of these is in the canonical record, and none will be written there automatically.

  • The lot was sold through a regional or online-only sale whose lot pages are not surfaced by the house's public keyword search.

    Probable

    The search established that the house's public search returns forthcoming lots rather than past ones, and that past lots are reachable only by direct URL. A lot can therefore exist in the archive and be effectively unfindable by search.

  • The sale was not held in New York, and “New York” in the working record refers to something else — the buyer's shipping route, or the house generally.

    Possible

Method

  1. 01Read the sale number and lot number off the invoice. One document settles this.
  2. 02Failing that, request the catalogue entry from the auction house directly, citing the invoice.

What would resolve it

Resolved by the payment receipt, confirmed against the published lot page.

Dead ends already walked

Published so that nobody repeats them. A documented negative is worth as much to the next researcher as a positive.

  • The auction house's public keyword search does not return past lots; it returns forthcoming consignments. Past lots are reachable only through direct sale-and-lot URLs, which are indexed externally but not by the house's own search. A negative result from that search therefore does not establish that a lot does not exist — and in this case it did not: the lot page was public throughout the search that failed to find it.

    2026-08-12

  • Sale index pages render only a partial sample of lots to an unauthenticated request. Any negative finding drawn from a sale index page is unsafe.

    2026-08-12

  • The major aggregators gate realised prices behind a login or a subscription. None of them can be used to establish a negative.

    2026-08-12

Where to look

If you can answer this

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