Hidden Sargent portrait sells for €170,000 in Paris
A boy stared out from a canvas for 147 years without the public ever seeing him. On 21 September 2026, he sold for €170,000 ($195,000) at Hôtel Drouot in Paris.
The price beat expectations. The small oil, John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of a Child, René Kieffer, carried a pre-sale estimate of €80,000–€120,000 ($92,000–$138,000), according to sale coverage by Artnet.
Sargent painted it in 1879. He was an American artist in his early twenties and living through his early years in Paris. The picture measures 46 x 38 cm. It is oil on canvas, signed upper left and dated.
The sitter was René Kieffer. The portrait stayed with his family from the year it was painted, passing by provenance — the documented chain of ownership — to his direct descendants. It had never appeared at public auction before, a history set out in a preview by Drouot.
The sale was organised by auctioneer Aurélien Lechertier at Drouot. It was scheduled for 14:00 CEST on 21 September, as listed by the Gazette Drouot. Drouot specialist Elisabeth Maréchaux praised “the vivacity of the child’s gaze.”
Early Sargents almost never reach the rostrum. This was the first portrait from the 1870s to appear at auction since Edouard Pailleron Junior, also from 1879, which sold in 1999 for nearly half a million dollars through French auctioneers Laurin, Guilloux, Buffetaud. A companion piece from the same year, Sargent’s portrait of René’s sister Jeanne Kieffer, sold in New York in 1985 for an undisclosed sum.
What makes this stand out is the paper trail, not just the price. A work held in one family for nearly 150 years arrives with its story intact. No resales. No gaps. For anyone picking up a phone to look, that is the back of the picture coming into view.
