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.

Best wishes

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, best wishes for whichever holiday you celebrate! Whether you go for a queit celebration or the bet party ever, enjoy these dark weeks (or if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, enjoy Summer).

Things are quite at the auction front, so I'll probably not post a lot until the second week of 2017. 2016 has been a nice year for the blog, with page views booming, many contacts with readers (always nice to hear from you), and some nice finds.