The story sounds like the plot of a novel. It all started with a portrait of the poet Arthur Rimbaud, drawn in 1872 by his fellow writer and companion Paul Verlaine.
The picture is well known in France as the frontispiece of Rimbaud’s “Poésies Complètes,” which was published posthumously in 1895. It was often reproduced in textbooks, so the drawing is near-universally familiar.
But the portrait’s whereabouts and its ownership was unknown. It was never exhibited and was hidden in private collections for 130 years. That is, until this year, when the picture was found and sold at the Hôtel Drouot auction house in Paris for a record-breaking sum.
The work was found in the estate of Hugues Gall, who died last May at age 84. Mr. Gall was an opera manager who was once the head of the Grand Théâtre de Genève and the Paris Opera. Since 2008, he had been the director of the Claude Monet Foundation in Giverny, where Monet’s water lily paintings were produced.
Mr. Gall was well known in France, and was an international personality in the theater world, said Vincent Sarrou, an associate auctioneer at Tessier & Sarrou & Associés, the house that obtained the estate. (Hôtel Drouot is a historic auction site that hosts sales for independent houses like Tessier & Sarrou.)
“He was given lots of items, such as paintings, as gifts,” Mr. Sarrou said.
When Mr. Gall died six months ago, leaving behind only a sister in Vienna, his estate included diverse treasures characteristic of a life well lived. There was a silver tea service from Russia, an Art Nouveau card table, an ancient medallion from Sicily bearing an image of Persephone, luggage from Louis Vuitton and Goyard, and drawings by the French poet and playwright Jean Cocteau.
But Lot 187, a small brown ink drawing of Rimbaud, was the hidden gem, discovered when the estate came to the auction house. It shows the young poet in silhouette, hair long, wearing a flat-brim hat and smoking a pipe, hands in the pocket of his coat. “Arthur Rimbaud” is written on it, as is the date, June 1872. Rimbaud would have been 17 years old.
Verlaine, who was 28 when he drew the portrait, wrote his monogram, “P.V.”, in the middle of the right side of the drawing and annotated “from memory” in the bottom right corner.
In late November, Ambroise Audoin, an expert who worked with the auction house, estimated that the piece would sell for 100,000 to 200,000 euros (about $105,000 to $210,000) at auction.
“Both Rimbaud and Verlaine are very important in our culture and bring a lot of national pride,” Mr. Audoin said.
The date when the drawing was made, June 1872, was also significant. Rimbaud, who was considered a boy genius, met Verlaine in Paris in September 1971, so the two had known each other for several months when the work was created.
They had begun a torrid affair — in its catalog, the auction house calls the relationship “a tumultuous period” in Rimbaud’s life — and the drawing was made a month or a few weeks before they decided to be together.
According to Mr. Audoin, Verlaine, who was married with a child, left his wife to go with Rimbaud to Brussels and London. They lived together for almost a year.
It was a period when Rimbaud was creatively charged and produced his most well-known poetry; he wrote the “The Drunken Boat” in 1871 and “A Season in Hell” in 1873.
The drawing’s significance was clear: It was rare and had never appeared on the market before. But its provenance was more murky.
After “Poésies Complètes” was published by Léon Vanier in 1895, the portrait was likely kept by Vanier’s widow, Mr. Sarrou said. What is known is that it later belonged to Paul-Annik Weiller, the son of the collector Paul-Louis Weiller, who passed it on, probably as a gift, to Mr. Gall. He displayed the drawing in his office in Giverny.
“It was a private circle who knew he had it, maybe just close friends,” Mr. Sarrou said.
On Dec. 2, 2024, the Hugues Gall collection was put up for auction at Hôtel Drouot. The estate’s lots went for a total of 1.4 million euros.
The portrait of Rimbaud was sold that afternoon for 585,000 euros (about $615,000), a world auction record for a drawing by Verlaine. It went to a private collector whose name was not released.
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