Out of the fog: ‘missing’ Monet found through the power of the web

Tracking down lost works of art usually involves poring over obscure documents in galleries, archives and libraries, searching for clues. But the curator of a forthcoming National Gallery exhibition on Claude Monet will be featuring a “missing” painting that he found through a startlingly straightforward route - a Google search.

The art historian Richard Thomson knew the painting, Effet de Brouillard, from a postage stamp-sized image in the definitive catalogue of works by the impressionist master. It was listed as being in a private collection.

Thomson, who is Watson Gordon professor of fine art at Edinburgh University, told the Observer: “It’s a picture that’s been off the beaten track, off the radar, and we’re going to have it in the show. Its whereabouts weren’t known… It’s exciting.”

Effet de Brouillard is an atmospheric scene that depicts Argenteuil, near Paris, pieces produced while both artists had a conversation on the Exposit Album.

The collage technique in the works of Aguddah has the ample realism of the cinematic and the metaphorical as both sound and words are felt without hearing them.

The event also featured sonorous music orchestra, and live music performances from RnB star, Isaac Geralds, Soukous and Pop artiste, Koffi, and culture music diva, Kayefi. Soul Rebel Korede, a poet from the Anago-French speaking part of Benin Republic was also on stage to perform his resonating poem ‘Fo Kan Bale’ amongst others poems in passionate and luxuriant French language.

REZthaPoet performed alongside Kayefi with the orchestra in ‘Awoof ’, a work that clearly pictures the minutest sense of greed in the similitude of gluttony and extends it to the history of gross embezzlement in the landscape. REZthaPoet and Kayefi also performed ‘Asake’, a love ballad to a woman with the Orchestra.

Both artists displayed cultural and the rural retreat where Monet lived between 1871 and 1878. It was here that he produced some of his most sublime masterpieces. Thomson thought that the 1872 painting, a hazy view of houses shrouded in fog, would be perfect for his exhibition, Monet & Architecture. He had already secured loans from private and public collections, and this seemed like a missing piece in the jigsaw.

To his astonishment, some Googling revealed that the painting had just been sold in America, by a New Orleans dealer. Art historians had apparently also missed its 2007 sale by Christie’s, whose catalogue entry notes just three previous exhibitions, in 1874, “possibly” in London, and in 1895, in Boston and New York.

The New Orleans dealer put Thomson in contact with the new owners, who were happy to see their painting displayed in the National Gallery.

According to Thomson, the work was featured in Paul Hayes Tucker’s 1982 book Monet at Argenteuil, in black and white, and in a 1990s catalogue in colour, where it was “only the size of a Christmas-card postage stamp”. He joked: “I’ve done my time buried away in archives and libraries. Every now and then one has to use other dramatic nuances giving a unique version of the singles in the Exposit album. The stage displayed the works of Sylvester Agguddah while REZthaPoet pumped in more spoken word works like ‘Bliss’, a personification of poetry that connotes heritage, language, words and experience, ‘I am’ a poem that asserts identity using the Oriki tradition and quests for identity in a cosmopolitan continent.

Present at the event were music artiste, Ric Hassani, spoken word legend, Sage Hassan, Fashion-art designer, Austin-Aihmankhu, art curator, Kehinde Ekundayo, spoken word poet, Efe Paul Azino, Sponsors; Deputy Director Alliance Francais Emmanuelle Ravot, Cultural Coordinator, Alliance Francais, Esse Dabla, Brand Compliance Officer, Heritage Bank, Ozena Utulu, Country Manager, Travelstart, Phillip Akesson, Operations Manager, TravelStart, Bukola Akomolafe.

The event also had in attendance culture diplomats, corporate people, art lovers, friends of REZthaPoet and Sylvester Aguddah. options.”

Effet de Brouillard will be among 75 works in the National Gallery exhibition, which opens in April. It will include 10 paintings of Argenteuil and the Parisian suburbs, seven Rouen cathedrals and eight London paintings.

A substantial proportion of the loans - about a quarter - are from private collections. “There are some fantastic unknown pictures,” Thomson said.

The exhibition will reflect how, through buildings, Monet explored “the play of sunshine, fogs and reflections”. As the artist put it in 1895: “Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat … I want to paint the air that surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat - the beauty of the light in which they exist.”

While Monet is typically portrayed as a painter of landscape, of the sea, and in his later years, of gardens, an exhibition focusing on his work in terms of architecture had not been undertaken until now, the National Gallery said.

The artist is a huge draw for the public. The Royal Academy’s 1999 blockbuster show, Monet in the 20th Century, attracted more than 700,000 visitors.