His long experience with four art auction houses, Sotheby's, Phillips, Son & Neale, Butterfields (now Bonhams) and Doyle New York has given him the background for rescuing a number of Old Master paintings from oblivion.
He is proud to have Antoine Le Grand Batard de Bourgogne (1421-1504), painted by Rogier van der Weyden as well as by Hans Memling, as a direct ancestor.
Gui Rochat was educated at the Latin and Greek Gymnasium school in Zwolle, The Netherlands, from 1946 to 1953, after which he entered the Dutch navy in the training program for reserve lieutenant.
Rochat discovered works by such artists as Giorgio de Chirico, Yves Tanguy, Pierre Soulages and Amedeo Modigliani, hidden theretofore in Western collections.
In 2005/6 he became Fine Arts consultant at DoyleNewYork, where again he made discoveries such as a rare drawing by Egon Schiele, now in the Neue Galerie museum in New York and an important small panel by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, circa 1900 of the beach at San Sébastian, with the image of his wife in the foreground.
And an important large oil on paper study for an unknown altar painting of the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew by Antoine Rivalz, acquired by the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, France, also fully illustrated and described in the catalogue raisonné on the artist.
The National Gallery of Scotland acquired a rediscovered strong oil sketch of a young woman in profile by the Flemish artist François-Joseph Navez, a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, and a significant and beautiful oil sketch of Achilles presenting the body of Hector to the deceased Patroclus by the French/Flemish artist Joseph-Benoît Suvée, a later and changed version of his work in the Louvre is now in a European private collection and will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonne by Drs.
A more recent discovery is that of a drawing preparatory for an engraving by Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella, the niece of the more famous French artist Jacques Stella, who was a close friend of Nicolas Poussin when both worked in Italy.
In the Braith-Mali Museum at Biberach in Germany is now a rediscovered small copper by the German master Johann Heinrich Schönfeld of Alexander offering Campaspe to Apelles.
And the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam acquired a very charming drawing in red chalk of a young woman looking at an engraving, recognized as by the 18th-century Dutch artist Gijsbertus van der Berg.
More recently was discovered a large ‘Penitent Saint Dominic’ now in a major Paris collection, which is described by Robert Fohr in his 2018 magnificent book on Georges de La Tour.
La Tribune de l’Art, internet publication, France, several times, 2004–present Alberto Cottino, "Michele Desubleo, a catalogue raisonné", Turin 2001, color illus.
("D’après Georges de La Tour, Saint Dominique en prière devant un crucifix, huile sur toile, 101 x 81 cm.