Ginger Levit splurged this year on a 14-volume set of reference books. The Benezit series of thick hardcovers lists French artists and their works -- invaluable information to art dealers but also of interest to serious Francophiles.

   Levit is decidedly both.

   Fluent in French, Levit visits Paris twice a year to indulge her love of 19th- and 20th-century oil paintings. "I go to the auctions every day and the flea market every weekend," she says. "I'm a regular now."

   Her favorite haunts? The Hotel Drouot, where paintings sell from $100 into the millions, and the Paris flea market. "I get on the Metro Saturday morning and spend the day there," she says of the market. "I walk around with my mouth open half the time."

   Usually Levit brings home a dozen paintings from artists who might include American expatriate Jill Benjamin or French painters Bruno-Francique Guillermin or Jean-Maurice Bouillot. She's been leaping the Atlantic on a regular basis since 1989, with trips lasting up to five weeks.

   "I love everything French," say Levit, an art consultant and dealer who holds Master's degrees in both French and Art History. "Once I started studying French and reading 19th-century authors, I found the courtliness, the elegance, the way of life very, very interesting."

   Levit's library includes more than 500 volumes. And now, armed with the Benezit series, Levit is more likely than ever to buy something she both loves and that has a rich, documentable history. "I'm very into paintings with provenance right now," she says. "I love an old painting and to know that the painter is in Benezit."