An oil study of a lion has been officially attributed to Eugène Delacroix, a prominent figure in the 19th-century Romantic movement, and will now be sold in France.
The Daguerre Val de Loire auction house revealed the attribution this week, stating that the owners of the oil study were unaware they possessed a work by Delacroix. The piece is now expected to fetch up to $325,800.
Auctioneer Malo de Lussac shared that the study had been displayed in the living room of a home in Tours, France, for some time. “The owners weren’t sure it was a Delacroix: when I entered the living room, I was immediately struck by its presence,” de Lussac told Agence-France Presse. “It was quite moving. We often see Delacroix’s works in museums, but very rarely in private collections.”
According to de Lussac, the family had some suspicion that Delacroix might have painted the study. “While researching,” he told Libération, “we came across two documents: one from Lee Johnson, a Delacroix expert from the 1980s, affirming its authenticity, along with an expert certificate.” Recent research has further confirmed his belief that the study is indeed by Delacroix.
Johnson, who passed away in 2006, was a leading authority on Delacroix, having published a major series of catalogs on the artist’s works in the 1980s.
Even if the study reaches its high estimate, it would still fall far below Delacroix’s auction record, set in 2018 by his 1862 painting Tigre jouant avec une tortue (Tiger Playing with a Tortoise), which sold for $9.88 million from the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller.
This discovery marks not the first time de Lussac has uncovered a significant painting attributed to a famous historical artist. In 2023, he found a piece by Pieter Brueghel the Younger hidden behind a door in a French home. The owners initially believed it was merely a copy, but de Lussac confirmed it was an authentic work by the artist.
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