{"id":486815,"date":"2026-06-20T09:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T09:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/486815\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T09:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T09:12:09","slug":"how-a-hamilton-man-helped-discover-a-lost-rembrandt-thought-to-be-fake-but-worth-millions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/486815\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Hamilton man helped discover a lost Rembrandt, thought to be fake, but worth millions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

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After 60 years, a painting thought to be fake has been discovered, by a team led by a Hamilton curator, to be the authentic work of the 17th-century Dutch master Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, worth millions. <\/p>\n

Jonathan Bikker, a curator at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, led the effort to authenticate Vision of Zacharias in the Temple, a painting that had been dismissed by scholars in the 1960s and largely disappeared from public view.<\/p>\n

“Since 1961, no one had seen it, and no scholar had seen it either,” Bikker told CBC Hamilton.<\/p>\n

Rembrandt is widely regarded as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. While hundreds of his works survive, new authentications are exceptionally rare.<\/p>\n

The discovery, announced earlier this year, adds another work to the catalogue of the famed Dutch master and turns a painting once worth thousands into one valued in the millions.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Hamilton man helps discover lost Rembrandt painting thought to be fake:\"\"<\/p>\n

Hamilton man helps discover lost Rembrandt painting thought to be fake<\/p>\n

A Hamilton-born curator at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum helped authenticate a painting long dismissed as a fake. After two years of research, it was found to be a genuine Rembrandt, worth millions, adding a new work to the Dutch master’s catalogue.From Hamilton to Amsterdam<\/p>\n

Bikker grew up in Hamilton and studied art history at McMaster University before pursuing graduate studies at Queen’s University.<\/p>\n

Research for his PhD brought him to the Netherlands, where a temporary contract at the Rijksmuseum eventually became a permanent job<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years later, he is the museum’s curator, and he’s uncovered a painting that disappeared for decades.<\/p>\n

“The most exciting part of the research is discovering new paintings,” Bikker said. “This doesn’t happen every day.”<\/p>\n

Many people reach out to him, claiming they own a masterpiece worth millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

“Almost always, it’s not,” Bikker said.<\/p>\n

But one email in late 2023 felt different, he said. The image in the email shows a picture of a painting that did resemble a Rembrandt.<\/p>\n

“The owner wasn’t actually asking, ‘Is this by Rembrandt?'” Bikker said. “His question was who painted it?” <\/p>\n

\"pictureCurator Jonathan Bikker, who was raised in Hamilton, in front of the painting he helped authenticate as a Rembrandt. (Jonathan Bikker)Painting now sits on loan in the Rijksmuseum<\/p>\n

Bikker and his team spent two years examining the painting, studying everything from the wood panel and pigments to the brushwork and composition.<\/p>\n

“We discovered that Rembrandt had made changes to the painting,” Bikker said. “So this painting had to be the first version.”<\/p>\n

That helped establish the work as the original, rather than a later copy.<\/p>\n

The findings also overturned assumptions about a similar version of the painting held in a German museum, which some experts had previously considered superior, Bikker says.<\/p>\n

When the Rijksmuseum shared its conclusion with the owner, the reaction was shock.<\/p>\n

“They had been told so long that it wasn’t by Rembrandt,” he said. “So, when we told them that it was, they were very pleasantly surprised.”<\/p>\n

The painting is now on display at the Rijksmuseum on long-term loan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-486815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}