“Young Lion Vanished”: Rembrandt’s $20m Masterpiece Becomes a Powerful Emblem on the Plight of the Lion

As Sotheby’s prepares to sell Rembrandt’s Young Lion Resting — estimated to achieve between $15 - 20 million — collectors Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan and Jon Ayers unite art and conservation, with entire proceeds benefiting wild cat conservation

NEW YORK — As Sotheby’s prepares to offer Rembrandt van Rijn’s Young Lion Resting (ca. 1638–42), a rare drawing estimated to sell for approximately $20 million, visitors this week will encounter a prescient reminder of the precarious state of the species: a faithful rendering of the drawing — but the lion in this version is gone. Beneath it, a simple title reads: “Young Lion Vanished.”

Timed to the public exhibition of Young Lion Resting ahead of its February 4, 2026 auction at Sotheby’s New York, the presentation immediately reveals its purpose: proceeds from the sale will benefit Panthera, the world’s leading global wild cat conservation organization devoted to ensuring a future for wild cats and the vast landscapes on which they depend. The event marks the 20th anniversary of Panthera’s founding in 2006 by conservationist Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan and the late renowned wildlife biologist Dr. Alan Rabinowitz. Panthera, the Gold Standard in its space, now leads science-driven conservation efforts across 39 countries to protect the world’s 40 species of wild cats — including lions, whose wild populations have collapsed by nearly 90 percent in the last century, with numbers plummeting from 200,000 to barely 20,000 today.

Believed to have been drawn from life, Young Lion Resting is the most significant drawing by Rembrandt to reach the market in a generation. It is also the only depiction of an animal by the artist to remain in private hands — with the other five lion drawings residing in the collections of major international museums, including the Louvre and the British Museum. The work is co-owned by Dr. Kaplan and his wife Daphne Recanati Kaplan, widely recognized as the world’s foremost private collectors of Rembrandt and his school, as well as their partner in wild cat conservation, philanthropist Jon Ayers, Board Chair of Panthera.

“In Young Lion Resting, Rembrandt captured a lion as a living force — breathing, watchful, sovereign,” said Kaplan, founder of The Leiden Collection and Panthera. “The tragedy of our time is that, four centuries later, the lion Rembrandt knew is vanishing from the world — on our collective watch.”

“This sale is about refusing to let lions survive only in museums and memory, and insisting they remain where they belong: alive in the wild,” added Ayers. “Directing the entire proceeds from this sale to Panthera is a way to convert cultural immortality into biological survival.”

“Young Lion Vanished” draws a deliberate parallel between Rembrandt’s 17th-century insights and today’s rapidly accelerating biodiversity crisis — asking whether future generations will encounter lions as living animals or as mere historical representations. It sparks a conversation about extinction, legacy, and what we notice and feel when something iconic disappears.

The Kaplans are the founders of The Leiden Collection, one of the most important and comprehensive collections of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art in existence. Among numerous masterpieces, it includes the sole work by Vermeer still in private hands and indeed 17 paintings by Rembrandt — just five fewer than the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands, the artist’s birthplace. Young Lion Resting, acquired in 2005, was Kaplan’s first Rembrandt purchase and the foundation upon which the Collection was built.

Two decades after this drawing launched The Leiden Collection and Kaplan co-founded Panthera, this historic sale brings his twin passions full circle — the legacy of Rembrandt now giving back to the conservation of the living creatures that have inspired us all for centuries.

“Young Lion Resting occupies a singular place in Rembrandt’s work,” said Gregory Rubinstein, Sotheby’s Worldwide Head of Old Master Drawings. “Its rarity and emotional immediacy are a vivid testimony to the power and majesty of this King of Beasts. That it will directly support conservation gives this sale exceptional resonance.”

For Panthera’s scientists, the symbolism of the missing lion in Young Lion Vanished reflects daily reality in the field.

“In many parts of Africa, lions have already disappeared from landscapes where they once thrived,” said Priscila Peralta-Aguilar, the Wildlife Health and Human-Wildlife Coexistence Coordinator for Central and West Africa. “Panthera’s mission is to reverse that trajectory — to keep lions present in the wild, not only preserved in art.”

Young Lion Resting will be on public view at Sotheby’s New York at the Breuer beginning January 30, ahead of its auction on February 4. Its allegorical pendant, “Young Lion Vanished,” will be available for viewing on Monday, February 2, 2026.