At the time of the discovery of Lascaux, Maurice Thaon, who had recently been demobbed, had been living in the Perigord for several months. On 19 September, he made some sketches of the cave and travelled to Brive to present them to Father Breuil, whom he had known since childhood. Breuil had high hopes for this young man, who did not have a university degree, but was naturally skilled, enthusiastic and keen on spelunking and mountain climbing. Father Breuil considered him as one of his "successors" and assigned him the task of recording the cave's paintings. Thaon worked on the project until 1946, making numerous tracings, thirty large-format colour drawings and partial photographic documentation. Several of his photographs were published in 1949 in Alan Houghton Brodrick's work, Lascaux: a commentary. The year before, Breuil had disowned Thaon's work in his introduction to Fernand Windels's book Lascaux: Chapelle Sixtine de la préhistoire [Lascaux: Sistine Chapel of Prehistory].
SAINT-MATHURIN (Suzanne de), BERGER (Marie-Thérèse). L’abbé Breuil et Maurice Thaon à Lascaux, Antiquités nationales, t. 18-19 (1986-1987), p. 123-132. Notice biographique sur le site internet de la médiathèque du patrimoine