Typical european townscene popular with the 19th century artists in England, the Netherlands and the central Europe. The painting is more likely to be by a German or Austrian artist because of the somewhat crowded composition, and the darker colour scheme. The figures, even though hard to see, are also more in the Germanic style. In terms of the value - this is a confidently executed painting, well balanced composition. If the condition is good, and I estimate the size should be about 60 by 40 cm (25 by 15in) or so, then you are looking at about $2,000 auction value. Reading the name of the artist will help you to get more history. Hope this helps, Jacob. Here is a link that might be useful: My page

I upload my from the camera to the hard drive, save them in my pictures by date, as in 03-27-08. By using the 0 in front of a single digit month, it keeps it in the correct order, datewise. If you just type in 3-17-08, when you get to October, which reads 10-17-08, it will put October first in the order saved. I delete the really bad ones, or ones I know I don't want even if they aren't good. I about killed DH one day. He decided to go thru and delete some of the bad pics we had from something, after I had saved what I wanted. Before I had them backed up, as in the next day! I had purposely kept some of the blurry ones, as they were the only ones I had of that particular shot. And I had a use for them. He deleted them. He won't do it again!!!!! I keep them backed up, but unless it's a huge video file, like our trip to Vermont 2 weeks ago when he took video with the camera, I'll leave them on the computer for the whole year, then do another back up of them on a DVD and then I will go thru and delete the ones I don't want to store on the hard drive to show someone when we travel. The video DH took on our trip I will save to DVD and delete, because it takes up so much space. I print all I want printed at home. I have a photo quality printer, and only use the ink for that printer, no refills for priniting pics!!! I don't want to spend that kind of money, even at Walmart to have them all printed, and no where to store them if I did. If there is something I want to give mom & dad, I print my own. I can see all the rest any time I want to by opening that file on the computer, and do so quite often. Tami...whos camera has died, and has to be sent back.

As far as our "new friend" goes, he's not trying to sell us anything yet. Part 2 is posted, and I think it's possible he (or she) is just giving us the benefit of knowledge about what goes on in China and elsewhere. I have a friend who's paid quite a bit for these "original" copies, and I bet she doesn't know they're sort of a paint-by-numbers. She'd probably appreciate the posting above. I am known to be naive, so I acknowledge maybe there will be a part 3 where we're given a sales pitch, but so far I don't see what Zhenwei stands to gain personally by the postings. So up to this time, I thank the poster for the information.

Beautiful picture! What are you using to print it with? I tried it with Windows Print Wizard and it printed exactly at 7x5. That would be 7" across and 5" up & down...is that what you are trying for? I am using XP, and I assume you have VISTA, so I don't know if the Print Wizard is different, but I will go through how I did it. I right clicked on the file (I saved it from here) and selected PRINT. I clicked NEXT until I go to the window that said LAYOUT SELECTION and I chose 5x7. It rotated and cropped the print automatically and printed it perfectly without cutting anything off (although I think it may have cropped just a slight amount off - as the dimensions on the picture I saved aren't a true 5x7). Then I just clicked next to continue through the print wizard until the photo printed. I chose to print 1 picture, but you can have it print two 5x7 on one page if you want...just put 2 in the number of copies to print at the bottom of the LAYOUT SELECTION window.