An emerald ring pawned for a painting?

"THE young Henri Matisse fell hard for Paul Cézanne’s “Three Bathers” (pictured) when he saw it in 1899 at the gallery of Ambroise Vollard in Paris. He couldn’t get the painting out of his mind; several agonising weeks later, he and his wife agreed to pawn her emerald ring and buy it. Matisse would not part with the painting for another 37 years; from it he drew, he said, “my faith and my perseverance”."

A beautiful example of the intensely emotional power of art.