A drawing which could be a Renoir worth £50,000 has been hanging on the wall of a home in Clacton.
John Mills, owner of Clacton Auctions in Old Road, visited a retired Clacton man to carry out some valuations and saw the red chalk drawing hanging on the wall.
Mr Mills said: "He said to me 'Do you know what that is?' and I said 'A fake Renoir'. He said 'No, it isn't'.
"I was very excited and my First reaction was 'Can I have a closer look?'"
The man, whose identity has not been revealed, had bought the drawing 40 years ago. If it is a genuine Renoir it could be worth more than £50,000 - and if it is a good fake it will still be worth thousands of pounds.
Mr Mills said he would now have to send details to the Wildenstein Foundation in Paris for confirmation the painting was a genuine Renoir.
That could take three months before he knows what he has on his hands.
Mr Mills explained: "The problem is that he was copied and faked so many times. With Renoir he was meticulous about the type of pigment and type of canvas so when you get a Renoir oil painting it's easier to prove.
"Most drawings were studies for the painting and although signed they were never intended to hang in galleries."
The drawing is called A Young Girl and dates back to around 1912. Mr Mills thinks it may have been a precursor to the Her First Night painting.
If the painting is by Mignon, who copied many of Renoir's paintings, it would still be worth up to £6,000 but if it is a normal fake it would be worthless.
Mr Mills said it was potentially the biggest thing he had discovered.
Pierre Renoir
Pierre Auguste Renoir was born in 1841 and died in 1919. He was a French impressionist painter and in the 1870s started exhibiting at the Impressionist salons.
He developed the "rainbow palette" from which black was eliminated.
Among his best known paintings were Le Moulin de la Galette (1876) and Les Parapluies (1883). In the 1880s he developed a more classical manner.
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