A previously unknown painting by the great Salvador Dalí has been unearthed by a private collector and is now going on view at Heather James Fine Art in New York.

The extremely rare oil painting, locked away since the 1960s, has resurfaced and was authenticated by the Dalí scholar Nicolas Descharnes. The untitled work, which is around nine inches tall and signed ‘Gala Salvador Dalí 1932’, passed a series of tests which included signature and pigment analysis and infrared photography in a bid to prove it’s authenticity.

“With a forgery, there is always a mistake you can track somewhere. This one, no mistake,” Nicolas Descharnes said. “There are always two levels to authentication. One is the technical level, with which I’ll have the help of other experts, and the other is just pure knowledge,” he added. The painting, which appears to be inspired by the exterior window of Dalí and Gala’s home in Port Lligat in Spain from 1932–1982, also shows a flagpole or boat mast emerging from a small window, motifs that appear in other works Dalí made around the same period.

The painting, which has not been yet been recognised by the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, has been registered in the Dalí archive managed by Descharnes himself.