Best wishes for 2018

My best wishes for 2018, may it bring us many gems at auction!

2017 was again a good year for me and my blog. No truly spectacular finds, but many nice works, and many fine contacts with fellow art lovers.

I ended the year with one discovery on Twitter which didn't make it to my blog yet (I often post things on one but not the other, depending on the time I have and what I have to say about the paintings).

In a small French auction, I noticed a very nice but damaged painting of Saint Jerome estimated at only 1500 Euro, which sold for 10,500 Euro instead. Sleuthing by some Twitterati revealed it to be a work by Gerrit Honthorst (and not some copy after a French artist, as the auction house thought), which was so far only known through a copy in Italy. It seems likely that it will appear in a major auction house (after restoration) pretty soon, with a much higher estimate!

2018 for me starts with a book I found cheap now at auction at the Kolbe & Fanning auction of numismatic books (a niche, but an expensive one, and this is the most important auction of the genre), which is nice. 500 lots, estimated between $150 and $20,000! Mine is somewhere inbetween ;-) and may give me some money to spend on art instead.

The blog passed the 100,000 pageviews in total last year, and ha a rather steady readership, thanks! I may try to list the countries which visit it this year, people come from all over the world, so art truly is a global language and love.