TORONTO \u2014 A Prince Rupert painting with a mysterious backstory has sold for $217,250 in an auction.<\/p>\n
The 361-year-old portrait was once owned by collapsed department store Hudson\u2019s Bay Co., which has hired Heffel Fine Art Auction House to sell its 4,400 pieces of art and artifacts.<\/p>\n
For most of its life, the portrait of HBC\u2019s first governor, Prince Rupert, was believed to have been painted by the studio of Flemish portraitist Anthony van Dyck.<\/p>\n
But when Heffel was preparing to sell the work last November, it wondered how a piece that looked so masterful could be attributed to van Dyck\u2019s studio assistants. <\/p>\n
Heffel temporarily pulled the painting from the auction and called on art history experts across Canada and Europe to help with an investigation. <\/p>\n
They eventually found enough proof in centuries-old records to reattribute the painting to famed Dutch portraitist Peter Lely.<\/p>\n
The reattribution pushed the painting\u2019s estimated value from a few thousand dollars to $150,000. Auction house estimates are typically conservative and pieces frequently sell for well above expectations.<\/p>\n
Heffel does not identify buyers of pieces it sells.<\/p>\n
The Prince Rupert painting\u2019s purchase price of $217,250 includes the hammer price of $180,000, plus the buyer\u2019s premium.<\/p>\n
The premium is 25 per cent of the hammer price up to and including $25,000, plus 20 per cent of the hammer price over $25,000 and any applicable sales tax.<\/p>\n
The painting was sold at live auction in Toronto\u2019s ritzy Yorkville neighbourhood, where pieces from Jean Paul Riopelle, Emily Carr and the Group of Seven were also on offer.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 22, 2026.<\/p>\n
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 A Prince Rupert painting with a mysterious backstory has sold for $217,250 in an auction. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":691393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,45,49,48,356,75,6578],"class_list":["post-691392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-retail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}