Lost Rembrandt Found In NJ Basement, Headed For Getty Museum

Finding a Rembrandt painting in your basement seems like a tall tale that Storage Wars fans tell each other at parties.

But this apocryphal story really happened in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

The painting - "The Unconscious Patient (An Allegory of the Sense of Smell)"- was discovered by John Nye, operator of the Bloomfield-based Nye and Co. auction house and one of the appraisers on the PBS hit “Antique Roadshow.”

Nye said the painting was part of the remnants of an Essex County estate and had been stored in a basement with other items that had been passed over by the heirs.

The deceased couple weren’t art collectors, but used the painting to decorate their home, Nye stated.

• See related article: Long lost Rembrandt brings almost $1.1 million at Nye & Company

In addition to the Rembrandt painting, Nye also found some other art and silver that he deemed to be potentially valuable, he told the Los Angeles Times.

But although Nye recognized the value of the painting – originally thought to be created by an unknown 19th century artist and worth about $500 – he didn’t know that he was about to set off a depth charge in the international art world.

After the painting was placed offered for sale in a September auction, a bidding war erupted among three eagle-eyed telephone bidders, Nye stated.

The painting – believed to be part of a series done by Rembrandt when the master artist was a teenage student around 1625 - eventually sold for almost $1.1 million.

Standing just 9-inches tall, the lost Rembrandt painting will be exhibited alongside two other paintings from the series at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, on Wednesday, the LA Times reported.

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