Many people around the world were cooped up at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, but few had the same good fortune as Charlotte Meyer, who spent some of her unexpected downtime after a house move going through a folder of works on paper that her late grandfather had handed down to her. She shared her findings with the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, who confirmed that the 35 etchings are in fact by the Dutch Old Master.
According to Omroep, the Netherlands Public Broadcasting network, the folder had been stored in a drawer in the family home in Zutphen, a town in the eastern part of the Netherlands, for many years. Meyer’s grandfather acquired them between 1900 and 1920.
At the time, Meyer told Omroep, “nobody was interesting in etching … It was nothing special. For only a few guilders, my grandfather bought 35 different copies.”
Meyer has not revealed the value of her collection. However, from 2023-25, Christie’s London sold a trove of Rembrandt prints collected by the late Sam Josefowitz. The top lot from the Dec. 3, 2025 sale was the etching Arnout Tholinx, Inspector (ca. 1656), which sold for $4.2 million, the highest auction price ever for an Old Master print. Some 70 other etchings, however, went for less than $50,000 each. And while it is a drawing and not a multiple, Rembrandt’s Young Lion Resting (ca. 1638-42) sold for a record-breaking price of $17.9 million at Sotheby’s earlier this month.
Next month, Meyer’s 35 etchings—along with additional works she has collected in the intervening years, by Rembrandt as well as his predecessors, contemporaries, and followers—will be part of an exhibition at the local Stedelijk Museum Zutphe. “From Dark to Light” is on view from Mar. 21 through June 14.
