A portrait by Jean-Honoré Fragonard that has spent a century away from the auction market is about to return to public view. Christie's will offer Tête de jeune femme, a compact oil on canvas measuring 38.3 by 30.5 centimetres, in its Old Masters sale in Paris on 4 November, with an estimate of €400,000 to €600,000. According to the house, the painting has not appeared at auction for a hundred years and has not been shown in a public exhibition since 1957.

The work is one of the leading lots of Christie's Classic Week in Paris, which runs from 3 to 5 November. The portrait is presented as a rediscovery rather than a familiar trophy: instead of the courtship scenes for which Fragonard is best known, it is an intimate single head, painted with the loose, rapid handling that marks the artist's most characteristic work. Christie's has drawn a comparison between its palette and that of Rembrandt's Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels, pointing to the painting's material qualities rather than any narrative subject.

The same 4 November sale, titled Maîtres Anciens: Peintures — Dessins — Sculptures, contains further rediscoveries. A recently identified Immaculée Conception by François Boucher, a major work from the artist's mature period, carries an estimate of €300,000 to €500,000 and has been linked to a drawing in the Louvre and to an Assumption in the National Galleries of Scotland. A previously unpublished sketch by Sir David Wilkie, La fête du village, is estimated at €20,000 to €30,000; it is a preparatory study for The Alehouse Door, now in Tate Britain.

The Fragonard's estimate looks modest beside recent results for the artist. On 21 October, a comparable small head, Head of an Old Man, sold at Sotheby's for $1,536,000 including fees. Fragonard's auction record stands at $28,015,315, set in 2013. Whether the century-long absence lifts Tête de jeune femme beyond its estimate will be decided in the Paris saleroom on Wednesday.