A "lazy" painting of several lions, which had been hanging in a family's living room for years, was auctioned yesterday (March 28) at a prestigious auction house in Paris.

But in reality, this painting is not what it seemed. As it turned out, the piece titled Study of Reclining Lions was the long-lost artwork of one of France's greatest modern painters, Eugène Delacroix.

The French artist, known for his masterpiece Liberty Leading the People, painted these lions in a brown and ochre savanna. The painting was sold in 1830, and since then, it had vanished.

The artwork was rediscovered in the home of a family in the central Touraine region of France when Malo de Lussac conducted a home appraisal. The family had owned the painting since 1860.

"The owners didn’t know it was a Delacroix," said de Lussac in an interview with Agence France-Presse. "When I entered the living room, my eyes were immediately drawn to the painting because it magnetized me. It was very moving. Delacroix’s works are in many museums, but very few are in private homes."

Sophia Anderson of Smithsonian Magazine notes that Delacroix was particularly fond of observing the tigers and lions kept in the animal enclosures at the Jardin des Plantes zoo in Paris.

"How necessary it is to… stick your head out of the door and try to read from the creation, which has nothing in common with cities and works of man," Delacroix once wrote.

The painting was auctioned by the Hôtel Drouot auction house, with an estimated value between 200,000 and 300,000 euros.