Horta, from Belgium, sells on 21 February 2017 a "Richter 1860" Portrait of a Lady, estimated at 1,000 to 1,500 Euro.
It is a very good portrait, with some annoying damage though. The painting is signed and dated, but the auction house seems to have no idea who the painter might be.
Richter is sadly a rather common name, so there were quite a few possible matches for this work. Gerhard Richter is slightly later, or this would have been worth a fortune (I rarely discuss contemporary painters here, but Richter really has painted some wonderful works).
The most likely candidate for a luxury portrait of this quality is Gustav Karl Ludwig Richter (1823-1884), a German portraitist who worked for emperors, high nobility, generals, and the like. The topmost painting is a portrait of Princess Carolath, the bottom one is the portrait of an unknown woman, currently in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.
Top: Madame Haritoff, Museum of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro. Bottom: Maria Alexandrovna of Edinburgh, in the Moscow State Historical Museum.
The work for sale is probably not as good as the royal or imperial commissions he got, but is still of very high quality (just look atthe way her hair is rendered, and the very expressive eyes). His works go for wildly varying amounts, sometimes only a few hundreds, sometimes more than 20,000 Euro, and no work of top quality seems to have come on the market in years. This work should be worth 3,000 to 4,000 Euro, although the (quite repairable) damage will limit the appeal somewhat.
UPDATE: sold for 550 Euro, someone has gotten a bargain
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