Sotheby’s auctions Rembrandt’s Young Lion Resting on February 4th, estimated at $15-20 million, with proceeds benefiting Panthera wild cat conservation.
Sotheby’s will offer Rembrandt van Rijn’s Young Lion Resting in February, estimated at $15-20 million. The entire hammer price benefits Panthera, the world’s leading wild cat conservation organisation. It’s the only depiction of an animal by Rembrandt still in private hands.
This isn’t just another Old Master drawing crossing the block. Created circa 1638-42 in black chalk with white chalk heightening and grey wash on brown laid paper, measuring 11.5 × 15 cm, the work captures something essential about both Rembrandt’s genius and the nature of lions themselves. The sale represents a deliberate strategy: use one of history’s greatest artistic observations of a lion to fund the survival of its living descendants.
Gregory Rubinstein, Sotheby’s Head of Old Master Drawings, gets straight to why this matters: “What is most remarkable about Young Lion Resting is the way Rembrandt combines sheer technical mastery with an ability seemingly to see into the very soul of this noble creature. Here, he brings together two very different strands of his genius: his extraordinary gift for the observation of nature, and his unrivalled ability to see to the very heart and the soul of his subjects, in his portraits and his history paintings alike.
Drawn from life with extraordinary energy and movement, the drawing is a work of breathtaking skill. Only in the greatest drawings does every stroke, every minute modulation of tone, feel so perfectly judged, and convey so much. Young Lion Resting is one of the most significant Old Master drawings to appear at auction in decades.”
Rembrandt at the Height of His Powers
The artist was in his early to mid-thirties when he executed this work. Already established in Amsterdam, producing dramatic portraits and history paintings, including his most innovative and theatrical compositions. The lion appears in three-quarter view, wearing a leash around its neck. It was drawn from life.
Every stroke conveys not just form but interior life, the quiet intensity that defines the creature’s essence. The drawing pulses with vitality. You see the poise, the power, the composure. Its gaze is piercing and unwavering. Its restless energy reveals itself most keenly in the left paw, which Rembrandt sketches in two different positions as he establishes ideal placement. The young lion is both at rest and in movement, calmly observing yet poised to strike. The clarity and power of its focused gaze are both beautiful and awe-inspiring.
Only six Rembrandt drawings of lions are currently known. Young Lion Resting is the sole example in private hands. Two closely related drawings, thought to depict the same animal, are held in the British Museum. Three additional pen and wash drawings of lions reside in the Louvre, the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, and the Rijksmuseum.
The opportunity to observe and draw a live lion occurred rarely in 17th-century Europe. Rembrandt would have seized any such chance. His fascination with curiosities and exotica is well documented through inventories of his own home. He collected these objects to use as motifs in his paintings. Lions feature prominently in various biblical and historical narratives that he depicted in paintings and prints, which explains why the master wanted to study how to render them convincingly.
Where exactly Rembrandt encountered this particular lion remains unknown. Most likely in one of the various private menageries that existed in the Netherlands at that time. Some collections of exotic animals were assembled by aristocrats, much as one might form an assemblage of unusual shells, minerals or other curiosities. Others operated commercially, popular attractions that people paid well to visit.
One of the latter is presumably where Rembrandt saw the elephant he drew around this time. Three outstanding elephant drawings survive, two now in the Albertina in Vienna, the third in the British Museum. The elephant’s travels around Europe are well documented. The lion’s story remains unknown.
Rembrandt produced a few more animal studies in pen and ink during this period. Two drawings of pigs in the Louvre and the British Museum. A remarkable depiction of birds of paradise in the Louvre. But the lion drawings represent something different. They capture not just exotic specimens but something closer to character, to personality.
From The Leiden Collection to Global Conservation
For over two decades, Young Lion Resting has resided in The Leiden Collection, among the most important private collections of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art in the world. The collection houses 17 paintings by Rembrandt, as well as the only works by Vermeer and Carel Fabritius to remain in private hands.
Dr Thomas S. Kaplan, Founder of Panthera and Founder of The Leiden Collection, acquired the drawing in 2005 as his very first Rembrandt purchase. It marked the beginning of what has become one of the most significant private collections of Dutch Golden Age art. Jon Ayers, Board Chair of Panthera, subsequently became a co-owner.
Dr Kaplan’s explanation for the sale cuts through: “Wildlife conservation is the one passion I have which surpasses Rembrandt – and I want to attract more people to that cause. I can think of no more fitting way to do so than to allow this magnificent drawing, which our family has loved for many years, and which carries so much personal meaning to my co-owner Jon Ayers and me, to go on to its next home…in service to Panthera. It heartens me to know that this masterpiece will have a profound impact on big cat conservation around the world going forward – and that such impact, in turn, will become an important part of its provenance and history.”
Jon Ayers adds: “As someone whose life purpose is to protect the world’s wild cats, I find Rembrandt’s Young Lion Resting profoundly moving – a work that so vividly captures the soul and spirit of lions and, now, will help protect their living counterparts. This drawing transcends centuries, connecting art and conservation in a shared reverence for the natural world. I can think of no finer legacy for this masterpiece than to serve the survival of the species that inspired it.”
Before entering The Leiden Collection, the drawing enjoyed an illustrious provenance. It once belonged to Jean-Jacques de Boissieu, a late 18th-century French artist and engraver celebrated for his detailed landscapes and printmaking. Later, in the 1960s, it passed to Robert Lebel, the Paris-based art historian, critic, and early champion of Surrealism.
The Leiden Collection has functioned as a dedicated lending library for Old Masters, loaning paintings to over 80 museums. The Metropolitan Museum, the National Galleries in Washington, DC and London, the Getty Museum, the Prado, and numerous other institutions. Starting in 2017, The Leiden Collection embarked on an international tour with an opening show at the Louvre in Paris.
The exhibition has since appeared at the National Museum of China in Beijing, the Long Museum in Shanghai, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the State Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Hermitage Amsterdam, H’ART Museum in Amsterdam, and the Norton Museum in Palm Beach. Most recently, from April to August 2025, Young Lion Resting was included in From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection at Amsterdam’s H’ART Museum.
A Global Exhibition Tour Before the Block
Before the February sale at Sotheby’s New York on 4th February 2026, Young Lion Resting will travel extensively. The work is currently on view in Sotheby’s galleries in Paris (3-4 November), returning to the city where it was exhibited at the Louvre in 2017.
From Paris, the drawing travels to New York (8-17 November), then London (28 November-1 December), followed by Abu Dhabi at the St Regis Hotel, Saadiyat (2-6 December), where it was also shown in 2019 at Louvre Abu Dhabi.
The tour continues to Hong Kong (8-10 December) and concludes in Riyadh (24-26 January) before the work appears during Sotheby’s Masters Week Sales.
Panthera: Science-Directed Conservation at Scale
Established in 2006, Panthera was born from the shared vision of wildlife biologist Dr Alan Rabinowitz and philanthropist Dr Thomas Kaplan. Both are fierce protectors of wild cats. The organisation’s mission is to ensure a future for wild cats and the vast landscapes on which they depend by fostering human-wild cat coexistence through science-directed initiatives.
Panthera’s work is the most comprehensive effort worldwide to conserve the world’s 40 species of wild cats. The organisation collaborates with local communities to stop poaching, fight the illegal wildlife trade, and protect vital habitats. With supporters around the world, Panthera raises awareness about the threats facing wild cats and works to ensure they survive for generations to come.
The organisation brings serious expertise. Panthera has created global conservation programmes at scale across 34 countries and continues to grow alongside a network of local partners and communities. With more than 70 PhD/MSc-level field scientists and law enforcement expertise drawn from the military, intelligence services, police, and crime sciences, Panthera is a unique force in targeted species conservation.
The Collectors Behind the Sale
Dr Thomas S. Kaplan is a Franco-American entrepreneur, philanthropist, environmentalist, and art collector. He’s Chairman of precious metals-focused asset management firm The Electrum Group. Past President and Chairman of the 92nd Street Y, Manhattan’s premier cultural and community centre. Founder and former Executive Chairman of Panthera, the global leader in big cat conservation.
Founder of The Leiden Collection, the world’s largest private collection of Rembrandt and Dutch Golden Age art. Past Chairman of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), a multilateral organisation led by France, the United Arab Emirates, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Dr Kaplan earned his Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Modern History from the University of Oxford, ultimately specialising in revolutions and counter-insurgency. For the past three decades, he’s applied geopolitical and historical insights to create high returns from investments in natural resources. Beginning with silver, then platinum group and base metals as well as gold, he later moved into hydrocarbons.
Since selling Leor Energy in 2007, when the company was the fastest growing privately-held natural gas producer in the United States, Dr Kaplan has focused on The Electrum Group, a precious metals-centred asset management firm acting in partnership with sovereign wealth funds. Electrum’s current portfolio includes significant interests in some of the world’s largest pre-production stage precious metal mining assets.
Thomas and Daphne Kaplan are among the foremost advocates of wildlife conservation. Along with the late Dr Alan Rabinowitz, they founded Panthera in 2006 to protect and preserve big cats and their ecosystems from extinction. An enterprise that now encompasses over a hundred partnerships in 40 countries. In 2009, the Kaplans endowed the Recanati-Kaplan Center at Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), creating the pre-eminent university-based centre for felid conservation, and the Postgraduate Diploma in International Wildlife Conservation Practice to train young conservationists from developing countries.
In 2014, Dr Kaplan launched the Global Alliance for Wild Cats, an international coalition of the world’s leading environmental philanthropists, together with the then Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, HH Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and other committed Chinese and Indian donors. In 2019, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia officially joined the Global Alliance. Dr Kaplan is also Founder and Chairman of The Orianne Society, a US-based environmental organisation protecting imperilled reptiles and amphibians, and of the Indian Ocean Tortoise Alliance (IOTA), a Seychelles-based NGO dedicated to the preservation of Aldabra giant tortoises and island ecosystems.
From 2017 to 2023, Dr Kaplan served as Chairman of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), a Geneva-based foundation established by the governments of France and the United Arab Emirates. With members including other sovereign nations, international organisations, and leading experts, ALIPH finances the implementation of preventive, emergency response, and restoration programmes for cultural property in danger of destruction or damage on account of armed conflict.
As of today, the foundation has supported over 550 projects in some 54 countries on four continents, including rapid interventions in post-crisis contexts such as the 2020 Beirut Port explosion, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. In 2019, he received from the World Monuments Fund the Hadrian Award, a recognition established in 1988 to honour international leaders who have advanced the preservation of world art and architecture.
In civic affairs, Dr Kaplan chairs 92NY Talks, New York City’s premier forum for the sharing of ideas. He’s a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the International Council of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. In 2011, together with General David Petraeus and Professor Graham Allison, he created the Recanati-Kaplan Intelligence Fellows Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, an initiative which brings together analysts and practitioners from friendly intelligence agencies to learn to “see around corners” by applying historical analysis to contemporary geopolitics.
The only programme of its kind in the world, it was joined in 2025 by Columbia and Yale universities. A similar effort for special forces officers, the Petraeus-Recanati-Kaplan Fellowship, was established in 2020 at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. In 2022, the Recanati-Kaplan Applied History Initiative was launched at the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum, a think-tank based at the University of Cambridge, to inform Middle East policy with deep historical insight.
For services to France, Dr Kaplan was appointed Chevalier (2012) and subsequently promoted to Officier (2020) in France’s National Order of the Legion of Honour, as well as Commandeur in the Order of Arts and Letters (2017). In 2018, he was awarded the rank of Officier in the Order of Orange-Nassau for his efforts in disseminating Dutch culture and building bridges between people through art. The Kaplans have three children and reside in New York City and Paris.
Jon Ayers served as Chairman and CEO of IDEXX Laboratories (NASDAQ: IDXX) from 2002 through 2019, leading a global team of over 8,000 employees dedicated to enhancing the health and well-being of pets. As a leading animal health company, IDEXX invested more than 80 per cent of the industry’s research and development in diagnostic and information technology, bringing novel offerings that significantly advanced the standard of care for veterinary medicine. During Ayers’s tenure, the company grew annual revenues from $380 million to $2.4 billion, whilst the company’s share price enjoyed a more than 40-fold increase.
Ayers has a degree from Yale in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and an MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated with high distinction (top 5 per cent). He’s always been a “cat person,” having had many beloved felines (Felis catus) as part of his family. As a conservationist, Ayers is a believer in the importance of species conservation. Inspired by the work of the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, he began supporting Panthera in 2017.
Ayers and his wife Helaine have established The Ayers Wild Cat Conservation Trust dedicated to the conservation of felidae in the wild. Wild cats both depend on and contribute to the health of vast, biodiverse landscapes around the world.
Accelerating his dedication to the future of wild cats, Ayers and The Ayers Wild Cat Conservation Trust joined Panthera’s Global Alliance for Wild Cats in March 2021 with a commitment to invest at least $20 million over the next 10 years for wild cat conservation. This pledge supports a range of critical and strategic wild cat conservation measures, with a particular focus on the preservation of the world’s 33 small wild cat species.
In September 2021, Ayers assumed the position of Chair of the Board of Directors of Panthera, succeeding Panthera Founder and 15-year Board Chair Dr Thomas S. Kaplan, now Chairman of The Global Alliance for Wild Cats.
Art, Commerce, and Conservation Converge
The sale of Young Lion Resting represents something increasingly rare in the art market: a transaction with purpose beyond price. The drawing will forever carry in its provenance the fact that it funded the protection of the species it depicts. Future owners won’t just acquire a masterwork by one of history’s greatest artists. They’ll become part of a conservation story that extends from a 17th-century menagerie in the Netherlands to protected habitats across 34 countries.
Dr Kaplan frames it clearly: “Rembrandt was clearly fascinated by lions , exotic creatures rarely found in Europe at the time , and, as in this drawing, was somehow able to instil in them a greater and deeper interior life than most artists ever could to a human subject.”
The drawing itself validates this observation. Look at the animal’s gaze. The way Rembrandt captures not just physical presence but something closer to consciousness, to awareness. The young lion is alert, composed, powerful. It’s both at rest and ready. This paradox, this simultaneity of states, is what elevates the work beyond mere observation into something that approaches understanding.
When Rembrandt drew this lion nearly 400 years ago, he couldn’t have imagined the species would face the threats it does today. Habitat loss, poaching, human-wildlife conflict. The African lion population has declined by more than 40 per cent over the past three generations. But he did understand, profoundly, what made the animal worthy of close attention. That understanding, preserved in black chalk and grey wash on brown laid paper, now funds the work of ensuring lions survive for future generations to observe, study, and protect.
The estimate of $15-20 million reflects the drawing’s rarity and quality. It’s the only depiction of an animal by Rembrandt in private hands. It’s the most significant drawing by the artist to appear at auction in a generation. And every pound, dollar, or euro raised goes directly to Panthera’s conservation programmes.
This is luxury with purpose. A masterwork serving both aesthetic and ecological imperatives. The drawing will change hands. It will acquire a new owner. But it will also, in that transaction, become an active participant in protecting the wild descendants of its subject. That’s the legacy Dr Kaplan and Jon Ayers envision, and it’s difficult to imagine a more fitting one.
*Images: Sotheby’s
