The Guardian reports on the sale of a Monet drawing from one of his famous trips to the Savoy in London. The dealer makes a telling comment on where the drawing comes from and why:

Claude Monet’s pastel drawing Waterloo Bridge, sketched from the balcony of the Savoy in 1901, has returned to the luxury hotel in the hope that it will be snapped up as a Christmas present by a guest. The pastel is on sale for £1.5m.

Waterloo Bridge has been in a Swiss private collection since 1947, but was sold this year. “In [mainland] Europe, there are a lot of people with no cash liquidity but a lot of assets,” said Simon Shore, director of Trinity House, the gallery selling the painting. “Here there’s a lot of cash around. We’ve already had a lot of interest in it.”

Monet’s Waterloo Bridge drawing on show at Savoy hotel (Guardian)