Here’s a great story from Canada about a seriously novice collector (he bought his first art book less than a month ago!) who picked up an oil painting by Tom Thomson at auction for under the original reserve price: click here.
For those who aren’t familiar with auction jargon, a reserve price is the agreed upon lowest price at which a consignor at auction will allow his or her piece to sell. Usually, if no bids are equal to or higher than the reserve price, the piece won’t be sold. In this case, the auctioneer was somehow able to contact the consignor of the artwork and negotiate a last-minute lowering of the reserve price; this is pretty unusual for major auction houses.
I have to admit that I wasn’t familiar with the artist Tom Thomson. It’s worth checking out his wikipedia page, if only for the story surrounding his mysterious death in 1917.
Fantastic brush work we don’t know much about Canadian painters here in the UK!