In November 2015, French singer Juliette Gréco exploded. It was an intense, hair-raising display of anger. "Her" painting had disappeared. Her large stone house in Verderonne, northern France, became the scene of great commotion. "I'm very saddened. It's as if a small piece of my life had been torn away," lamented the 88-year-old singer, who lived in the Isère countryside in southeastern France with her husband, pianist and composer Gérard Jouannest. Unrest seized this house visited by her family, collaborators, journalists, friends, employees, admirers, devoted friends and sycophants.

Who could have dared to lay their hands on this small painting, with its faded charm, so dear to the artist's heart? While Gréco may have sometimes hidden it under her office's sofa or intermittently forgot about it, that didn't mean it was unimportant to her. As proof, the canvas was occasionally restored to its former dignity and displayed prominently on a mantelpiece. "In truth, we didn't always pay much attention to it," said Irmeli Jung, a photographer and long-time friend of Gréco. "It was small, not too ugly, but vague, with few colors" and always placed away from the light. So, out of sight.

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