Is there one piece in particular that sticks out in your mind?

The painting “Eighty and eighteen” by John William Godward, which was auctioned at Dorotheum in April 2013.  It was truly a fairy-tale experience.

The painting came to us on a snowy winter’s day in January 2013 during an international consulting day in Munich. When I saw the entry “J. W. Godward” on my list, I was sure it could only be a print. The person bringing the piece had not sent a photograph in advance or otherwise made contact. When the small, delicate old lady, with an acquaintance by her side, then stood in the doorway, I had to ask her to come closer to me several times. She approached me hesitantly and apologised for bothering me with what was surely not a valuable painting. Her friend had talked her into it, she said.

When I finally got to see the picture wrapped in a towel, I was speechless. At first glance, I could see that it was real. It was fantastic. It’s worth about 100,000 euros, I told the delicate lady, who immediately began to tremble and stare at me in disbelief. I asked her where the picture came from. She told me that she had inherited it from her grandmother. I asked her if the painting had had a frame, as a frame could often provide information about the history of a work. She said it hadn’t.

But that’s when her acquaintance interfered again: the lady had, in fact, had a mirror made from the frame, and they could bring the mirror over, she said. When this mismatched couple brought the frame some time (and some snowflakes!) later, the whole story of the painting opened up. The frame contained the artist’s label and gallery notes: now, we knew what it was called, where it was exhibited and where it had been sold. The grandmother of the contributor had acquired it from the artist in Liverpool in 1898, and it had been in the family ever since.

When I contacted the American specialist Dr Vern. G. Swanson, he was thrilled: as a researcher, he had been looking for this painting all his life and, as a result of the discovery, was able to include it in the extended edition of the catalogue raisonné.

The modest elderly lady was blindsided when the painting fetched 268,700 euros at auction, and donated half of this to charity.