A portrait of Arthur Rimbaud by his lover, the French poet Paul Verlaine, sold at auction today for 585,000 euros, a price well above the original estimate, the Drouot auction house announced.

This pen and brown ink sketch is dated ‘June 1872’ but Verlaine said he drew the teenage Rimbaud ‘from memory’ at an uncertain date.

Rimbaud, then 17, is shown in profile, with long hair and a hat, hands in pockets, smoking a pipe. By this time Rimbaud had fallen out not only with his family but also with the literary circles of Paris who had been shocked by his excesses. Only Verlaine supported him.

“At that moment the destinies of the two lovers were linked,” expert Ambroise Oudouin explained before the sale.

In July 1872 the two left for Belgium and London. Their romance ended a year later when Verlaine, drunk and in a state of desperation, shot and slightly wounded Rimbaud.

The sketch belonged to private collections and its fate was unknown until it was bought by the former director of the Paris Opera, Hugh Gall, who died last May. The House of Drouot believes that one of its first owners was probably the publisher Léon Vanier, who published Rimbaud’s poems after the poet’s death in 1895.

After a fierce bidding war, the sketch was purchased by a private individual to be added to his collection.

To date, only six original Rimbaud photographs have been located. One was taken in 1866 in his hometown of Charlesville, two in Paris in 1871 and three in Harar, Ethiopia in 1883.