When I verified this old and beautiful Ravensburger puzzle on February 10, 2016, the final count was 2003 pieces. However, I was able to detect 3 clearly foreign pieces. For that reason, I was hoping that this Liberation Celebration, by French artist André Bauchant, would be complete. It is not easy to find a puzzle from 1976 in excellent condition, so I was optimistic when I could spot the foreign pieces.
Foreign and extra pieces
However, when I detect a foreign piece in a puzzle during the verification process, I never list it for sale right away. Why? Because if there is a foreign piece that I have detected, it is possible that there is another one that I have not detected. After all, a foreign piece in a puzzle indicates a careless owner. For that reason, I simply put it aside with the intention of completing it some time in the future.
The same applies when I get extra pieces but I am unable to detect foreign ones. If a puzzle must have 1530 pieces, for example, and I get 1531,...
2000
2000, Fame, The Game of Cards, Raffaello Sorbi
15
Feb
The title of the this painting is The Game of Cards, and the author is the Italian artist Raffaello Sorbi. This is the first puzzle that I completed by the brand Fame. This jigsaw brand is not one of the most popular ones, but they have beautiful puzzles. Although they don't have a very large catalog available, they have been very careful in their choices. For that reason, most of their puzzles are very nice. They even have two large 5000 pieces puzzles that are extremely difficult to find: A Meeting by the Stile, by Heywood Hardy, and An Old Surrey Farm, by Robert Gallon.
Cards and other Games
The Game of Cards is a delightful scene where the painter has been able to capture the fun of the game. The way the four characters in the front are depicted is especially interesting. The man sitting at the table seems to be trying to understand, scratching his forehead. In the meantime, the woman sitting in front of him is explaining the reason why he probably lost. Everybody seems to be having a fun time. It is, in summary, a beautiful genre scene. Raffaello Sorbi completed, in fact, a whole series of paintings...
2000, Jumbo, In the Library, Johann Hamza
27
Jan
Johann Hamza was a painter of genre who was born in Kostelní Myslová, Czech Republic, on 21 June 1848 (although most online references indicate wrongly that he was born in Teltsch on 21 June 1850). He studied under Eduard Von Engerth at the Vienna Academy, and exhibited in Vienna, Dresden and Munich between 1879 and 1890. He died in 1927.
We don't have a lot of information about him, except that he specialized in genre painting. He liked to depict everyday life by portraying ordinary people in common activities. At a very early age he was already a consummate craftsman who conceived his pictures with a lot of detail. He was very precise depicting the surfaces of all the materials, objects, and figures. This painting is a good example.
Johann Hamza in his Library
Jorge Luis Borges always imagined Paradise as some kind of library. It seems that perhaps Johann Hamza could agree with him, since libraries and books are common topics in his paintings. There are at least five works with the title In the Library, where different gentlemen are sitting reading in a library or a room full of books. Furthermore, some other works represent people reading, like An Old Man...