“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. Drawn from life with extraordinary energy and movement, it 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.”
Gregory Rubinstein, Sotheby’s Head of Old Master Drawings
“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.”
Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan, Founder of Panthera & Founder of The Leiden Collection
“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.”
Jon Ayers, Board Chair of Panthera
NEW YORK / PARIS, 3 NOVEMBER: This February, Sotheby’s will offer for sale a masterpiece of draughtsmanship: Rembrandt’s Young Lion Resting. Capturing the power, poise and restless vitality of this majestic creature, this extraordinary work — a rare example of its kind in Rembrandt’s oeuvre — stands among the most important Old Master drawings to come to auction in recent decades. It is also the most significant drawing by Rembrandt to come to auction in a generation.
The only depiction of an animal by Rembrandt remaining in private hands, the drawing has resided for over two decades in the acclaimed Leiden Collection — among the most important private collections of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art in the world, and home to no fewer than 17 paintings by Rembrandt as well as the only works by Vermeer and Carel Fabritius to remain in private hands. Encapsulating the qualities of power, nobility and stateliness for which the lion has been revered universally throughout history with proceeds destined to benefit Panthera, the world’s leading organization devoted to the conservation of wild cats.
Although Rembrandt’s interest in the king of beasts was clearly pronounced, drawings by him of this subject are extremely rare: only six Rembrandt drawings of lions are currently known, and of those, Young Lion Resting constitutes the only example in private hands: two drawings — closely related to the present one and thought to depict the same animal — are held in the collection of the British Museum; with three additional pen and wash drawings of lions housed in the Louvre, the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, and the Rijksmuseum.
When Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan, Founder of Panthera and Founder of The Leiden Collection, acquired the drawing in 2005, Young Lion Resting represented his very first Rembrandt purchase — marking the beginnings of a collection which has since grown to become one of the most important private collections of Dutch Golden Age art in private hands today. Jon Ayers, Board Chair of Panthera, subsequently became a co-owner of the work.
“Rembrandt was clearly fascinated by lions — exotic creatures rarely found in Europe at the time —
and, as in this drawing, was somehow able to instill in them a greater and deeper interior life than
most artists ever could to a human subject”
Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan
As details of the sale of Young Lion Resting are today revealed, the work itself will be exhibited in Sotheby’s galleries in Paris, back in the city where it was exhibited in 2017 at the Louvre. From Paris, the drawing will travel to New York, then to London, then to Abu Dhabi (where it was also exhibited in 2019 at Louvre Abu Dhabi), then to Hong Kong, and finally to Saudi Arabia, before it is offered during Sotheby’s Masters Week Sales in New York next February.
Rembrandt would have been in his early to mid-thirties when he executed the work — at a time when he was already well established in Amsterdam, producing dramatic portraits and history paintings, including many of the most innovative and theatrical compositions he ever created. In Young Lion Resting, the animal is depicted in three-quarter view, wearing a leash around its neck, suggesting — in a way that the immediacy of the image would seem to corroborate — that it was drawn from life. It is rendered in exquisite detail in every stroke, conveying not just the lion’s form, but its inner life as well, and the quiet intensity that speaks to the true essence of the creature. The drawing pulses with life, capturing the poise, power and composure of this king of animals — its gaze piercing and unwavering, and its restless energy captured most keenly in the animal’s left paw, which Rembrandt sketches in two different positions as he establishes its ideal placement. The young lion is both at rest and in movement, calmly observing yet also poised as if about to strike, the clarity and power of its focused gaze both beautiful and awe-inspiring.
The opportunity to see a live lion — and to draw it from life — would only have occurred relatively rarely in 17th-century Europe, and Rembrandt surely would have grasped any such opportunity with great enthusiasm. His fascination with curiosities and exotica is well known, as the inventories taken of the contents of his own home demonstrate. Rembrandt collected these objects so that he could use them as motifs in his paintings. This could also explain why the master would have wanted to study how to make truly lifelike drawings of lions — a creature that features prominently in various biblical and historical stories that he depicted in his paintings and prints.
Where exactly Rembrandt might have come across this lion remains unknown, yet it was most likely in one of the various private menageries that existed in the Netherlands at that time. Some such collections of exotic animals were established by aristocrats, much as one might form an assemblage of unusual shells, minerals or other curiosities. Others were kept for commercial reasons, and constituted popular attractions that people paid well to visit. One of the latter is presumably where Rembrandt must have seen the elephant of which he made three outstanding drawings at around this time (two now in the Albertina in Vienna, the other in the British Museum). But whereas the travels around Europe of that elephant are well documented, the story of the lion seen in this remarkable drawing remains unknown.
In addition to this small group of drawings of lions and elephants, Rembrandt produced a few more studies of animals in pen and ink — including two drawings of pigs in the Louvre and the British Museum — and a remarkable depiction of birds of paradise, also in the Louvre.
Prior to coming to sale, Young Lion Resting has been included in various exhibitions of The Leiden Collection around the world, most recently in From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection, shown at Amsterdam’s H’ART Museum from April-August 2025. Before entering The Leiden Collection, the drawing enjoyed a similarly interesting and illustrious history, having once belonged to Jean-Jacques de Boissieu, a late 18th century French artist and engraver celebrated for his detailed landscapes and printmaking and, later on, in the 1960s, to Robert Lebel, the Paris-based art historian, critic, and early champion of Surrealism.
Established in 2006, Panthera was born from the shared vision of renowned wildlife biologist Dr. Alan Rabinowitz and philanthropist Dr. Thomas Kaplan — both fierce protectors of wild cats. Its mission is to ensure a future for wild cats and the vast landscapes on which they depend by fostering human-wild cat coexistence and protecting wild cat landscapes through science-directed initiatives.
Panthera’s work is the most comprehensive effort worldwide to conserve the world’s 40 species of wild cats — collaborating with local communities to stop poaching, fight the illegal wildlife trade, and protect vital habitats. With supporters around the world, the organization raises awareness about the threats facing wild cats and works to ensure they survive for generations to come.
Panthera brings unrivalled scientific and technical expertise to bear on the most critical challenges in wild cat species conservation. Panthera has created global conservation programs 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.
Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan
Founder of Panthera & Founder of The Leiden Collection
Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan is a Franco-American entrepreneur, philanthropist, environmentalist, and art collector. He is the 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 center; 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; and past Chairman of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), a multilateral organization 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 specializing in revolutions and counter-insurgency. For the past three decades, he has applied geopolitical and historical insights to create high returns from investments in natural resources. Beginning with silver, and then platinum group and base metals as well as gold, he later moved into hydrocarbons. Since selling Leor Energy in 2007, when the company represented the fastest growing privately-held natural gas producer in the United States, Dr. Kaplan has focused on The Electrum Group — a precious metals-centered 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 forty countries. In 2009, the Kaplans endowed the Recanati-Kaplan Center at Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), creating the preeminent university-based center 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, H.H. 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 the Founder and Chairman of The Orianne Society, a U.S.-based environmental organization protecting imperiled 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.
In the arts, the Kaplans created The Leiden Collection, the world’s largest private collection of Rembrandt and Dutch Golden Age art. As the only dedicated “lending library” for Old Masters, the Collection has loaned paintings to over 80 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, the National Galleries in Washington, D.C. and London, the Getty Museum, the Prado, and numerous other institutions. Starting in 2017, The Leiden Collection, which includes 17 works by Rembrandt, embarked on an international tour with an opening show at the Louvre in Paris. Since then, the exhibition has been received 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, the then Hermitage Amsterdam, H’ART Museum in Amsterdam, and the Norton Museum in Palm Beach.
From 2017 to 2023, Dr. Kaplan served as the 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 organizations, 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 4 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 honor 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 is 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 program 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.
Among other distinctions, 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 Honor, 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 in Paris.
Jon Ayers
Board Chair of Panthera
As Chairman and CEO of IDEXX Laboratories (NASDAQ: IDXX) from 2002 through 2019, Jon led 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 has invested more than 80% of the industry’s R&D in diagnostic and information technology, bringing novel offerings that significantly advanced the standard of care for veterinary medicine. During Jon’s tenure, the company grew annual revenues from $380 million to $2.4 billion, while the company’s share price enjoyed a more than 40-fold increase.
Jon 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%).
Jon is and always has been a “cat person,” having had many beloved felines (Felis catus) as part of his family. As a conservationist, Jon is a believer in the importance of species conservation. Inspired by the work of the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, Jon began supporting Panthera in 2017. Jon and his wife Helaine have established The Ayers Wild Cat Conservation Trust dedicated to the conservation of felidae in the wild. Wid cats both depend on and contribute to the health of the vast, biodiverse landscapes around the world, but also contribute to.
Accelerating his dedication to the future of wild cats around the world, 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 $US 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, Jon 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.
*The current record for a Rembrandt work on paper is, The bulwark De Rose and the windmill De Smeerpot: a view near the Rampoortje, Amsterdam, which sold in 2000 for $3.7M.
Sotheby’s Paris: 3–4 November
Sotheby’s New York: 8–17 November
Sotheby’s London: 28 November–1 December
Abu Dhabi: 2–6 December
Sotheby’s Hong Kong: 8–10 December
Saudi Arabia: 24–26 January
Paris
Jeanne Scanvic | Jeanne.Scanvic@sothebys.com
London
Mitzi Mina | Mitzi.Mina@Sothebys.com
Carlotta Quadrati C.Quadrati@sothebys.com
New York
Anna Tisi | Anna.Tisi@Sotheby’s.com
Established in 1744, Sotheby’s is the world’s premier destination for art and luxury. Sotheby’s promotes access to and ownership of exceptional art and luxury objects through auctions and buy-now channels including private sales, e-commerce and retail. Our trusted global marketplace is supported by an industry-leading technology platform and a network of specialists spanning 40 countries and 70 categories which include Contemporary Art, Modern and Impressionist Art, Old Masters, Chinese Works of Art, Jewelry, Watches, Wine and Spirits, and Design, as well as collectible cars and real estate. Sotheby’s believes in the transformative power of art and culture and is committed to making our industries more inclusive, sustainable and collaborative.
Instagram I Facebook I Twitter I YouTube I LinkedIn I Pinterest I WeChat I Weibo I Youku
* Estimates do not include buyer's premium or overhead premium. Prices achieved include the hammer price plus buyer's premium and overhead premium and are net of any fees paid to the purchaser where the purchaser provided an irrevocable bid.
By joining our email list, you will receive the latest conservation updates, exciting stories from the field, our monthly newsletter, and more.
Join Our Email ListPanthera cares about your privacy. Read our Privacy Policy.
© Sebastian Kennerknecht
