After almost a year of careful restoration, Ben Elwes Fine Art will be revealing Claude Joseph Vernet's Noon - Return from Fishing, a stunning, lost masterpiece in pristine condition. It is the earliest of three versions of this composition, one of which, dated 1760, is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

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Until recently, Noon - Return from Fishing was largely hidden under layers of paint, which had been applied in the 19th-century. Rather bafflingly this covered most of the background with a crude depiction of a waterfall, eliminating the beautifully rendered viaduct completely.

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Pictured below: Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), Noon - The Return from Fishing, c. 1750, oil on canvas (99 x 139 cm).