Treasure seekers, art archaeologists, passionate discoverers... This is how those who, like me, devote a large part of their lives to searching for missing or unpublished works could be qualified. From Leonardo da Vinci to Caravaggio, via Gustave Courbet and Vincent van Gogh, there are many artists whose forgotten works (sometimes the most important ones) have yet to be (re)discovered, slumbering in dark attics or other ignored cellars. Contrary to a widespread idea, sometimes even maintained by certain actors of the market and the history of art, the corpus of many major artists is far from being definitively closed. Proof of this is the recent discovery of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvatore Mundi or Rembrandt's Portrait of a Young Man, wonderfully brought to light by the Dutch art dealer Jan Six. Often subject to the most violent controversies (one will think of the famous Brouillard d'Arles falsely attributed to van Gogh or Courbet's improbable head of the Origine du monde), these discoveries nevertheless fascinate a very large public always eager for novelty and sensationalism.

For my part, I was lucky enough to find several original paintings and drawings that had been missing for more than a century, which were totally unknown to the public and specialists. Among them, a large painting by Gustave Courbet, the famous artist of Realism, representing a Baigneuse dans un paysage, exhibited for the first time in its history in October 2019 at the Gustave Courbet Museum in Ornans. It is easy to imagine, such a discovery, probably the most impressive new painting by the master who has come out of oblivion, arouses intense emotion and joy in the person who makes it. A few years ago, another of my beautiful adventures was the discovery of a notebook of unpublished drawings by Eugène Delacroix, whose famous Liberté guidant le peuple has become one of the great icons of French painting. Its owner, a collector and art lover, had bought it for a few coins at a flea market in the Paris area. He did not know anything about its author, and asked me to help him in his research. Appointment taken, he showed me the famous notebook consisting of about twenty sheets filled with studies and beautifully drawn sketches. Two years of meticulous investigation were necessary to convince the experts and specialists of the painter. Faced with novelty and works devoid of any traceable provenance, resistance is generally very hard. But the much-hoped-for victory was indeed achieved: our notebook was sold at a prestigious auction house Artcurial, and ended up joining the collections of an institution.

Let there be no mistake about it: getting the authenticity of an unpublished work of art without any archival trace recognized is a real struggle, an adventure strewn with pitfalls, sometimes discouraging, requiring the implementation of complex strategies. Few works of this nature cross the finish line. In a world where everyone has their say, you can expect to take a few blows and hear the most contradictory opinions. Periods of despondency are not uncommon, there are many disappointments, but my experience has taught me that one must avoid letting oneself be taken in by the doubts of pessimistic interlocutors and inaccessible to the dream, so important in terms of discoveries...

Most of the works gathered below were acquired by me in auctions, antique markets, flea markets or entrusted by private individuals who did not know the identity of their authors. They were stripped of any attribution or wrongly described, and have been the subject of a meticulous investigation leading to their identification, confirmed by authoritative specialist experts, whom I hasten to thank.