LACMA Acquires Painting by Rembrandt Pupil

“Mercury and Argus,” a long lost painting by Carel Fabritius, has been added to the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The 17th-Century Dutch painting by one of Rembrandt’s most accomplished pupils is a gift of the Ahmanson Foundation.

As a matter of policy, the museum has not disclosed the price of the painting, but “Mercury and Argus” set an auction record of $851,400 for Fabritius in 1985, when Sotheby’s sold it to a dealer in a Monaco auction. Several museums were interested in the work, but the Ahmanson Foundation eventually brought it to LACMA, where it is on view in the museum’s Dutch paintings gallery.

When “Mercury and Argus” came up for sale in 1985, it was greeted as an important discovery because it had been hidden away in private collections for more than 200 years. Scholars knew it only through a copy by French artist Jean-Honore Fragonard that hangs in the Louvre, and the missing painting was thought to be the work of Rembrandt instead of his student. Fragonard copied the painting in 1764, when it was sold in Paris as a Rembrandt.

But in 1985 Sotheby’s determined that “Mercury and Argus” was actually by Fabritius. He had signed the picture, but his signature had been obscured, probably by someone who wanted to sell it as a more valuable Rembrandt.

The 1645-47 painting now hangs at LACMA between a self-portrait by Ferdinand Bol and Govaert Flinck’s “Portrait of a Bearded Man.” The threesome were “the most distinctive” of Rembrandt’s students, according to Philip Conisbee, the museum’s senior curator of European painting and sculpture.

Though few examples exist, Fabritius’ work is particularly valued because he was remarkably skilled and “he approached each work in a slightly different way. He always rethought his subject from the ground up,” Conisbee said.

In the case of “Mercury and Argus,” Fabritius’ painting looks like a rustic genre scene, but it actually portrays a mythological theme. “The clue is a sword that lies beside Mercury, who will use it to cut off Argus’ head,” Conisbee said.

According to mythology, the Roman god Jupiter falls in love with a woman, Io, and transforms her into a cow to hide her from his jealous wife, Juno. When Juno learns of her husband’s deceit, she dispatches the shepherd Argus to watch over the cow and keep her away from Jupiter.

Not to be foiled, Jupiter then sends Mercury to steal the cow from Argus. Mercury carries out his orders by putting Argus to sleep with wine and then cutting off his head. Fabritius has painted the scene at the moment when Argus has drifted off to sleep. His staff has fallen from his hand and his dog dozes alongside him. Cows and sheep are clustered behind Mercury who waits the moment to strike.

The beautifully painted composition places the figures and animals in a warm light that follows through to a patch of cloudy blue sky. “The rich texturing is like Rembrandt, but Fabritius used a subtle coloring and blond tonalities that should never be mistaken for Rembrandt’s work,” Conisbee said.

The painting “makes a fitting companion to our Rembrandt masterpiece, ‘Raising of Lazarus,’ ” museum director Earl A. Powell said. “Mercury and Argus” joins two other Dutch paintings that were Ahmanson gifts, “The Sleeping Danae Being Prepared to Receive Jupiter” by Hendrik Goltzius and “Samson and Delilah” by Jan Steen.

Fabritius died in 1654 at 31, the victim of an explosion in an arsenal near his studio. Only 10 known Fabritius paintings are known to have survived, but Conisbee expects that a few other works will be attributed to the artist as the result of future scholarship.

A Dutch research group that is systematically studying all paintings attributed to Rembrandt declared last December that a Rembrandt self-portrait at the Norton Simon Museum is actually the work of Fabritius, but the Simon museum has rejected that assessment.