A reader of this blog kindly pointed me to an auction for a painting sold a few months ago at Vanderkindere (in an auction I presented some pictures from, but not this one). Described there as "attributed to Cornelis de Vos", it made 5,800 Euro.
Now, it appears at a Mercier auction for 22 March 2015, as "David II Teniers", with an estimate of 50,000 to 60,000 Euro. Quite a nice and swift return on investment, if it would be sold for that price.
It's a nice picture, but I'm not sure it really is a Teniers. His portraits include works like the above two (from the Fondation Custodia), which seem to be much more finely detailed, and much more realistic: the one for sale almost looks like a caricature. The background is too bland, the clothing too indifferent, the collar just a crude representation... The same arguments would also disqualify it from being a "real" (or at least a finished) De Vos.
I'm not a specialist in Teniers (or in any painter I discuss on this blog, for that matter), but I wouldn't estimate this painting at more than what it fetched at Vanderkindere. UPDATE: not sold, as it now again for sale (at less than half the estimated price) at Köller in Switzerland
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