I wasn’t actually looking to buy a painting at all when I dropped into eBay late one afternoon during the middle of last week. Keen on furthering our interest in nature, I was looking to buy a piece of woodland on which to establish our own personal nature reserve. Very much a long shot I know, but I visited eBay and typed in the search term ‘woodland for sale’.

The very first item in a list of about 50 items read “Early 20th Century Watercolour, Good Quality, Lake Scene Woodland”.  Now while a watercolour wasn’t exactly what I had in mind despite the fact that it was a woodland scene, it looked as pretty as a picture if you’ll excuse the pun, so I clicked on the link.

Along with an enlarged image of this particular watercolour it read:

“Style: Realism
Size: 33 x 38cm (13″ x 15″)
Provenance: From a private estate in Oxford
Condition: The painting is in nice condition although there is light foxing

This is a very nice early 20th century watercolour depicting a view of a lake through a woodland. The painting is of nice quality and is signed to bottom left. The painting is housed in a nice wooden frame which has a little wear.”

And the price? With one hour and 10 minutes to go before the auction ended, the bid price was £19.50!

To cut a long story short, I couldn’t help myself. Twenty quid for an early 20th century watercolour that if nothing else matched perfectly the colours of our sitting room, how bad is that, I thought to myself?

So I placed my maximum bid, £25, shut down my machine, locked up the office and went home.

Next morning I fired up my machine, downloaded my emails, and the first one that came in had the subject line: “Congratulations, you’ve won this eBay item.”

Somewhat nervously, I read on.

Sale price: £19.50
Postage: £6.50
Total price: £25

Five days later it arrived by insured post.

Now I have to say, it’s no Damien Hirst, but then quite frankly I wouldn’t have wanted it if it had been. No, this is better than a Damien Hirst, better by far. This is proper art by a proper artist. Not only that, unlike a Damien Hirst, I could comfortably afford this, and it was guaranteed not to cause offence by anyone visiting our home because it didn’t look like our cat had thrown up on a piece of paper that we had subsequently had expensively framed.

No,  this is a proper, original, genuine work of art by an unknown but reasonably talented artist, that didn’t break the bank, cannot possibly cause offence, is an absolute one-off, fits perfectly with the decour of our sitting room, and cost less than the price of a modern art print with a print run of many thousands and of which there are probably dozens of copies hanging on sitting room walls in houses in our one small town alone let alone the rest of the country. How bad is that?

Editor, Third Age.