Less than six months after announcing the discovery of an unpublished Leonardo drawing, the French auction house Tajan has revealed the unearthing of two paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806).
The pair came to light when Thaddée Prate, Tajan’s Old Masters director, was conducting an inventory in a Normandy chateau. Both works once belonged to Pierre Jacques Onésyme Bergeret de Grancourt, an amateur artist and contemporary of Fragonard who accompanied him on his second trip to Italy from 1773-74.
The last-known reference to the paintings, titled Le Jeu de la Palette and Le Jeu de la Bascule, is the auction in Paris of his collection in 1786.